Time Frame: A decade or so after both BtVS & AtS finales.
Rating: T-Mature (cuz Faith still curses like a sailor)
This story contains several gay relationships, consider yourselves forewarned.
Legalities: All B:tVS characters are that of the Mighty Whedon and his glorious intellect. This work is meant only in celebration and nothing ulterior.
Chapter 2 - A Bit of a Situation
"Crap! Did I blow your cover?" Xander Harris, watcher of the Council, cringed.
"Yes, Xander!" Andrew yelled at the chagrined taller man. "You want to delete my Skyrim main save file too? Or you could just shoot me in the foot! Again!"
"Those were accidents! One time! One time and I spend the rest of my life apologizing for things I did not mean to do!" The one-eyed man whined.
"I lost a toe Xander!" The Finn family, minus the youngest son, discreetly turned their attention to Andrew's feet, all wondering which one it was.
"That's how you lost your pinky toe?" Mark exclaimed.
"It was an accident!" Was Xander's reflexive defense. He looked over to the young man and remembered the situation.
"You told me you lost it from frostbite!"
"I, uh..." Andrew's anger at Xander was forgotten at his boyfriends words. "It's just that he means we uh..." he looked over to Xander hoping for any kind of support from his from his friend. Catching Andrew's eyes, the taller man got the cue and became suddenly jovial.
"Hey, everybody! I'm Xander Harris, pleased to meet you!" he thrust his hand out at the eldest male and hopped for the best.
Reflexively, Joel took the hand and shook it manfully. "Joel Finn, this is my wife Nancy, and my kids. Andrew here, dates my youngest, Mark." he finished with a slight twitch in his words. Mark, looked confused and irritate but his upbringing allowed the introductions to continue.
"Really? That's great! Listen, I know ol' Andy here going on a almost decade now. He's a great guy." Xander spoke hurriedly as he shook hands with Joel and gave friendly nods and smiles to the rest of the Finn family. "But here's the thing, we have a little bit of a situation upstairs that we need Andrew to put on his Big Boss hat and help us take care of it."
Andrew Wells was a mother bear when it came to the building he ran in downtown Manhattan and Xander did not want to admit the fact that he may have lost several floors to a demon attack, no matter what number or how well coordinated it was. It was obviously not welcomed news, but he knew his fellow watcher would not stand idly by while anything happened to his baby.
"And that situation needs shotguns and pistols?" Rob, the eldest son asked incredulously. Andrew looking down and pinching the bridge of his nose, breathed a deep sigh.
"Right now, it needs Andrew." Xander answered simply.
"Well, brunch is officially shot to hell now." Andrew whined.
"Andrew!" Mark, exclaimed, finally unable to take anymore of his confusion. "What the fuck is going on here?!"
"Language!" a shame-faced Nancy standing behind her husband admonished her youngest son while holding hands over little Esther's ears.
For a moment, Mark looked down embarrassed, but then remembered his anger. "Andrew," the watcher heard his boyfriend say his name in a desperate breath, "what is happening." Mark asked his boyfriend of a year, there was a pleading tone in his question.
Andrew opened his mouth but he was interrupted by the return of the dark woman that arrived wielding a shotgun, Faith, Joel remembered her name. She slid out from the shadows of the next room.
"We gotta lotta enemies, kid." Was her explanation as she walked towards the little scene, her weapon slung over her shoulder.
"You're a charity organization, Andrew, what could you possibly do to make enemies?" Mark asked looking back and forth from Faith to Xander then to Andrew. The frustration in his voice was clear by its tremble.
"We rescue girls." Andrew shrugged, Faith snorted and continued for him.
"Usually from crap situations, but sometimes, it's from crap people." She told the Finns, a hard look on her face. "There's a lotta people out there that ain't as nice as you folks, ain't as polite." The last word had an sharp edge to it. "We take these girls from these fractions of people and they get angry 'cuz they think we stole property from them." Joel and Rob frowned as they listened Faith to while Nancy and Brooke made distraught faces. "These girls - they ain't thought of as people, just things." the dark woman spit out.
"So they come at us, sometimes to take back what they think is theirs, sometimes they do it just to hurt us, to put us in our places." Xander added.
"So you guys are, like, under attack by some kind of, like, slavers." Brooke asked, naivete in her words.
"More like a well-funded criminal organization." Andrew specified.
"Terrorists." Joel nodded in understanding.
"Yeah, terrorists." Xander rolled his eye but was unseen in the low light. "Most of our top brass has had to deal with these jerks over the years. Helps that we all know how to handle ourselves in these kind of situations."
"That why you know how to shoot, son? " Joel asked of Andrew, seeing his youngest son's boyfriend in anew light. There was true mettle beneath the soft tailored cloth.
"Sometimes I have to be in places that are pretty crazy, or be around people who are crazy-dangerous," the watcher admitted, he looked to his boyfriend apologetically, "and it's the worst part about the job for me. I kind of hate it. Like a lot. so I try not to to talk about that side of things to people outside work. Most of us don't even want to deal with it all anymore." Andrew gave Xander and Faith a glance. "But we have to, someone has to. People," Andrew gave a sad look to Esther, "sometimes, little girls who are barely old enough to understand what's even going on, they depend on us."
The young watcher held his hand out to Xander and made a give-me motion to him. Without a word Xander pulled another pistol from his back waist and handed it to his comrade. Andrew took it, pressed a button by the the weapon's grip and the magazine slid out. Checking its ammo in the light, Andrew continued speaking.
"I've been doing this for a while now, Mark and it's a big part of my life. I can understand if you're angry with me right now for all the lying I've done, but we can talk about that later." With a dramatic flare Andrew slapped the magazine back into it's housing, pulled the slide back to check the chamber with a loud CLACK CLACK and tucked it into the back of his belt. "Right now, I've got work to do." Mark stood speechless, he had never seen this side of his boyfriend before, so assertive, so authoritative, so unbelievably hot.
"I can get us up there, but once we're there, I'm in charge." Andrew looked pointedly at Faith.
"I don't take orders from you, Wells." The slayer half snarled. Andrew rolled his eyes at the expected reaction.
"Jeez, Faith, give it a rest. It's his house, he gets to call the shots." Xander reminded.
"Whatever, as long as I get to bust some heads." Faith acquiesced with scowl.
Xander gave a lopsided grin at his fellow watcher, who took the lead immediately. They headed down a stairwell and down a hallway towards the gun range.
"I have a private express elevator going to my office at the range, which floor are the baddies on?" Andrew asked for the situation.
"Twenty-six up to thirty-one," the shorter watcher scowled hearing that and Xander was quick to get the rest out, "the good news is we got them bottle-necked at both ends. We've kept skirmishing with their main body so they can't organize enough to make headway up or down."
"How are your people?" Andrew inquired.
"We lost a few here and there, but we're still strong," Xander's face became thick with angry resolve, then gave his comrade a glance, "stronger now with you."
Andrew frowned as though that was bad news. "What's the bad?"
"The bad is the head mojo guy is setting up something big between floors twenty-seven and thirty. We don't know what it is but all wiccan intel is telling us it's some seriously dark juju." Xander looked as though he had something else to say but decided against it. Andrew did not press.
"What's the worse?" He asked instead.
Xander frowned, hoping that he didn't have to explain it right then. "If we lose this, southern New York is gone."
"What do you mean?" Andrew asked confused. Even the Finns looked to Xander, not understanding his words.
"The power they got going on? Don't worry about N.Y.C., everything between here and Montauk is the chicken at last year's barbecue."
"Burnt." Andrew remembered the terrible buffet at the yearly Watcher's retreat.
"You mean they got some kind of nuke up there?!" Joel exclaimed.
"Might as well be, whatever it is, this is big bad stuff."
They stopped at a door which Andrew promptly opened the door to a weapons cache. Weapon-racks of firearms, boxes of ammunition ran in columns across a well lit room with metal double doors at the rear. On the walls, body armor hung on hooks besides various swords and knives.
"Everyone grab whatever you can." Xander called out as he began rifling through the racks. Joel Finn handed weapons out to his children.
"You're Barbara's kid, right?" Faith called to Esther.
"That's my mom." the small girl nodded.
"C'mere, I gotta ask you something." Faith told her. She looked at Nancy who was making a disapproving face. "I ain't gonna bite her, just gotta talk to her."
"I go to Summer's Academy Mrs. Lehane." Esther told the dangerous looking woman by name, knowing what she was going to ask. "I'm taught the lessons there."
Nancy made a face, she knew she was missing something in Esther and the dark woman's exchange, but could not figure out what. Faith seemed satisfied and made a slow nod.
"Good." She went to the weapon racks and grabbed a knife and a short-sword. She raised both weapons at Esther and asked, "Which one?"
"You can't honestly expect her to..." Nancy spoke up, shocked at the idea of the small child fighting.
"The knife and a baton." Esther interrupted with a point to the rack.
"Sure thing, kid." Faith returned the sword and reached for a nightstick.
"The collapsible one, please."
Faith moved her hand over to the child's preferred weapon and picked it up off the shelf. "It's the real thing up there, you get it? You have to take this seriously."
"I will, Mrs. Lehane."
Nancy, still aghast moved as though she was going to try to take the weapons from the child but Esther began examining the weight of the knife, flipping it in the air before her and catching it as the older woman pulled back, seeing the child easily handle the large blade.
"You're in charge of keeping them safe, okay? What ever gets passed me and the others, it's your job to put down. You understand kid?"
"Yes, Mrs. Lehane." the child replied with a nod as she she gave a careful inspection of her given baton, flicking it out, twirling it in her hand and twirling it with practiced ease.
"Stop talking to her like that, she just a child!" Nancy admonished Faith, who ignored her and asked the child another question.
"What's rule number one kid?"
"Don't die."
"Good girl." Faith made a nod to Esther and gave a deprecating look to Nancy. "We're good to go Wells, break time's over." she called to Andrew who was now armed. Joel and Rob both held shotguns and Brooke found a pistol.
"Let's get to work." Andrew announced as he pressed the button for the elevator, and it's double doors slid open.