FIC: Faith The Series Season Eight Episode One

Giles' heart thumped as he leapt off his Norton Commando and sped up the fire escape, the rusting iron steps shuddering and shaking under his weight, and onto cinema's flat roof. The moment he reached the roof, Xander twisted to face him, worry written across his face. "Is she-."

"She's fine son." Giles shot Xander a warm smile before dropping down on his hands and knees, and joined Xander and Wesley on their bellies, peering through his rifle's sight to theCrawfordMansionseveral hundred yards away. "Run us through the plan again, son."

"The path we're over-looking leads to the rear of the mansion and is about six hundred yards long, it's about two cars wide, and has only one path off it two hundred yards in on the left side. It's in this cul-de-sac that Rona's hiding with her girls. Then they reach Faith," Xander's voice grew grim. "The mansion's rear opens up into a wire mesh-fenced parking lot, big enough to take three rows of six cars. Faith and her people will be waiting at the building's rear."

Giles nodded slowly. Thanks to Xander's possession at Halloween all those years before, Giles always deferred to him in matters tactical. "How sure can we be that Wolfram & Hart will know where we are?" Wesley queried.

"We weren't shy about where we were fleeing to," Xander reported. "They'll know where we are."

"And they're not stupid," Wesley commented. "They'll know they're being led."

"Yeah," Xander nodded. "Not stupid, but they're arrogant and angry, they won't care they're being led, they'll just think strength of numbers will get them the victory. Lucky for us, they won't know aboutWillow's Slayers, they'll be the big advantage."

"I understand from Gunn you were going through W&H's Research & Development department looking for experimental weaponry? Find anything interesting?" Wesley asked.

"Wolfram & Hart's got some very nasty tech," Xander reported. "When the last of whoever the enemy is enters the path, I'm going to detonate a sonic boom explosion that'll rip anything in the last twenty yards of the path apart, liquefying their bones and brains. Then, when the last third reach where Rona and the Slayers are, I'll signal Rona to move in."

"What are they equipped with?" queried Wesley.

"Unfortunately I decided it was too risky to give a bunch of newly Called, buzzing with hormones, teen girls futuristic weaponry," Xander dryly replied.

"Rare good judgement where teen girls are involved," Wesley snorted.

"So they have the melee weaponry they've trained with. But when they engage the enemy's rear, we'll start sniping the troops at the front."

"And our rifles?" Wesley queried.

"Our rifles are top of the range rifles, and our ammo is armour-piercing with an incendiary centre," Xander smirked. "Anything they hit, they'll blow the head off."

"And when they reach the parking lot?" Giles demanded.

"I've set another bomb, this one an electrical force-field spreading for ten feet either side of the entrance which will incinerate anything within its borders for fifteen seconds." Xander replied. "After that, well Faith and Gunn have a full armoury of modern weapons."

"Then all we have to do is wai-," Giles' voice trailed off, blood chilling and mouth drying as he peered through the sniper scope and saw their enemy milling into the snaking passageway. "They're here."

"You'll have to help me out," Xander's voice was taut and thick with tension. "What am I looking at?"

Giles licked his lips before answering. "The towering, thickly-muscled creatures with protruding foreheads and lantern jaws with tusks at the corners of their lower jaws are trolls, the shorter, fat-bellied hairy ones with their knuckles grazing the ground are Orcs, and the four-legged animals, well you recognise hellhounds."

"Trolls? Orcs?" Xander grunted. "I feel like I'm Frodo Baggins."

Giles looked towards Xander. "You've read the Lord of The Rings?"

"You're joking aren't you?" Xander's sober mask briefly cracked. "There's films!" Xander's mask reasserted itself as he spoke into his mouthpiece. "Everyone, stay alert, they're entering the passageway. Be ready." Xander returned to peering through his sniper scope with the rest of them, his hand clinging tightly to a detonator. The moment the last of the monster army entered the passageway, Xander pressed down on the detonator's red button.

Giles almost vomited as he watched the last two dozen or so Orcs explode from within, brains arching up while their powerful bodies seemed to contract and implode as if as if in a massive trash compactor, their blood and bones showering the walls and ground. "Whoa," Xander let out an awed slightly sick whisper then shook himself, eye returning to the scope. The three of them watched in silent horror as the army marched on through the passageway, the ground seeming to tremble under their heavy-footed tread.

After what seemed to be an eternity, Xander muttered into his mouthpiece. "Rona, the last of the army is passing your position, now."

Rona started at Xander's voice in her ear, lost in her thoughts of her deceased Watcher, and what that meant for her future. Always assuming she had one. Forcing her thoughts to return to the present, she replied with a terse 'understood', then turned to her fellow Slayers, the other teens brandishing a combination of crossbows, maces, battle-axes, and swords. "Girls, fire arrows into their rear, then when they turn to face, retreat back to the passageway. If they catch up or won't break away, go in hard with the melee weapons. Then break and huddle back in here, hit them hard, then retreat, understood?" Satisfied by the nods, Rona picked up her own crossbow, absently noting just how damp her palm felt as she clung to the wood. "Form up!"

The group crept out, eight astride with her front and centre and two more crossbow-carrying eights behind. "Take aim," she whispered, sweat trickling on her forehead. "FIRE!"

The air whistled to the firing of their eight bolts, the bolts thudding into their targets' thickly muscled backs. "Front line, kneel and re-load!" Rona shouted as she knelt, confusion rampant in the lines of their enemy as they struggled to turn to face their attackers. "Second line, fire!"

Once again the air whistled to the sound of bolts flying through it to thump into their adversaries, several of the now pin-cushioned monsters falling to the ground. "Second line kneel and re-load, third line fire!" Arrows flew through the sky, crashing into and downing yet more of the monsters. "Third line, kneel, first line rise and fire at will." Rona joined her companions in rising and firing at the now charging creatures, several more downed. "First line crouch and retreat! Second line fire!" Yet more arrows crashed into the howling beasts, quivering with their deadly impact, the ground riddled with corpses, the surviving monsters struggling to clamber over them. "Second line crouch and retreat! Third line fire!" More fell to yet more bolts, blood slicking the floor. "Okay, run!"

The moment the last of them reached the passageway, Rona spun around and drew her sword, breath coming in adrenalin-fuelled pants. She slumped weakly when the monsters stopped at the entrance of the passageway, growled as one then withdrew.

"Well done Rona, over twenty dead for no losses, you did great," Xander praised. "When they retreat, I want you to repeat the tactic as they escape, okay?"

"Okay."

Xander glanced at his companions. "Shall we?"

Neither of the Englishmen were expert snipers, but from this distance and with these state of the art rifles they didn't need to be. Their fingers tugged on the triggers, their eyes fixed through the scopes as they began raining hot lead down on the trolls, every shot detonating a head in a crimson explosion, their bodies collapsing like marionettes that had had their strings snapped. The moment half a dozen of the ogres were in the parking lot's entrance, Xander picked up and pressed the detonator again.

White light streaked out of the floor, engulfing the unfortunate ogres for only a quarter of a minute, but it was enough to incinerate the beasts, burning them to a charred skeleton. "Faith, it's all yours." Xander paused for a second. "Good luck."

"Thanks hon." Faith took a gusting breath and looked towards Gunn, picking up a remote control. "Looks like we're up."

"Feel like I'm ten," Gunn grumbled as he did the same.

The remote controls controlled state of military robots, weaponised machines on treads, each of the robots flanking the entrance carrying a M240 machine gun. And the moment the hellhounds charged into the parking lot, Gunn and Faith fired.

Faith's curved mouth fell open, dark eyes widening in shock as her ears pounded to the roar of the guns, shell after white-hot shell tearing into the pack of dogs, shredding them to blood, bone, and fur, ripping them apart. Soon, Faith's eyes watered with the wall of fire engulfing the unsuspecting hellhounds and the back of her throat clogged with ash.

And then the guns fell silent. Faith blinked for a second, then gathered herself as the by now increasingly bemused trolls began to stumble into the parking lot, Xander and the others still barraging those in the alley behind with bullets. "'Kay," Faith drew her sword. "Hand to hand it is-."

Her voice faltered off as instead of attacking, the trolls and orcs stumbled back into the alleyway, and away from them, their spirit broken from the pasting they'd already taken. "Xan," Faith's voice held a note of wonderment, she couldn't believe they'd broken the monster army so easily, "they're broken. Just let 'em go. We've won."

"Okay," Xander replied through her earpiece. "Everyone meet back at the base."

"We're fully equipped with several million siphoned off from W&H accounts to fund us," Giles reported.

"Nice of W&H to throw some coin our way," Faith drawled.

"Yes," Wesley chuckled. "Very charitable." The younger Englishman sobered. "What are we going to do with our new army?"

"Yes," Giles pursed his lips together, "it's quite the quandary. Drogyn and Alith have already left through the Ghost Roads. Thanks to our resources we're fully equipped-."

"Fully equipped to deal with an army of Slayers?" Wesley queried. "I rather think we're under staffed to deal with four dozen Slayers?"

"Hey!" Faith protested. "Xan and Gunn have plenty of field experience."

"Yes they have," Giles nodded. "However neither of them have the training either academically or pastorally to deal with Slayers. However," Giles forestalled her continuing disagreement, "they will prove exceptional assistance in their combat training. Furthermore, I intend to put the word out to Council survivors that we need assistance here."

"You figurin' on settin' up a Council Mark II?" Faith wrinkled her nose.

"If you like," Wesley replied. "Yes," it was Wes' turn to forestall her, "the Council certainly had its flaws, and the treatment of its Slayers was a crying shame. There will have to be changes. However, the Council is needed to provide guidance."

"Damn straight they'll have to be changes," Faith snapped. "Every girl gets the choice 'bout whether they wanna stay, and if they do they're on salary. And none of this 18th birthday crap!"

"I took all that as read," Giles smoothly replied.

Faith's full lips pursed into a pout, Giles' instant response temporarily takin' the wind outta her sails. "'Kay, five by five, we'll have to talk more later though."

"I somehow think I'll be getting your opinion whether I want it or not," smirked Giles.

"Damn straight."

"It's a disaster!" the pinstripe-suited man shook his head. "No it's worse than that, a catastrophe!"

The Primarch chuckled, content and satisfied in his comfortably lofty position, and both unable and unwilling to conceal his delight at his underling's distress. "I rather think you're over-stating things, it's a setback, nothing more than that." The Primarch flashed a feral grin. "And with a few more empty places at the upper table, well competition breeds a leaner, more efficient Black Thorn."

"No sir, you don't understand," this came from a representative of their Italian Wolfram & Hart branch, the ample-chested Ill Costa Biancha. "Cyvus Vail was the mage who created our dimensional prisons, and the Archduke supplied the men who patrolled them, with them dead…."

The Primach's heart chilled as he realised what the woman was driving at, his mood dipping still further as he remembered something else. A fair proportion of the Senior Partners' powers had been distilled within bothHamiltonand the LA office. With their destruction they were weakened in a way they'd never been weakened in centuries. And with distracted jailers came the inevitability of vulnerable prisons. "All our enemies," he whispered, recoiling inwardly as he recalled the terrible monsters too powerful to either slay or control that the Senior Partners had imprisoned to prevent their balking of the firm's schemes, "they could all be freed."

"No sir," the pinstriped man shook his head. "We've got the reports in. Not could be freed, are freed. All of them."

The Primach shivered inwardly as he struggled to build up the courage that he'd need to report this calamity to his superiors. Being first amongst the world's Black Thorns meant access to unimaginable privilege and power, but it also meant he was their conduit, the one who delivered reports and received their orders.

And their molten wrath.

Taramoaned softly as she unfastened the front door to the apartment she shared withWillow, a great tiredness assailing her. The spells she'd cast today, although far lesser than those cast by her girl-friend, had taken a wearying mental toll, while the losses they'd suffered had taken an emotional toll. She felt like she could sleep for a month, but knew tomorrow the rebuilding, the planning for whatever came next would have to begin.

Tarastumbled through into the apartment's lounge, tugging off her coat as she did so. Her hand paused half-way to the light switch, jaw dropping open at the obscenity she saw before her. "Y…you, cannnn't ddddo that!" she gasped.

"Oh," the stranger\friend she saw before her shook their head. "I had hoped you hadn't seen that." The other person rose and stepped towards her, hands outstretched. "You could join me."

"And betray my friends," Tara hurriedly raised her shields. "Never. We could help-."

"I don't need your help!" The other person's voice reverberated harshly around the room, hot spikes impaling her ears. "I don't need anyone's help!" In a half-second Tara's shields were batted away, her body engulfed in searing agony, pain that rose to a crescendo that ended in death.