Author: mkcrl120
Disclaimer: All the characters mentioned in this story belong to Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy or some other people. I own nothing and wrote this just to get it out of my system.
Summary: Set two weeks after the events in Explaining Africa 3
Authors Notes: I have no clue about Africa. Which is probably always a good place to start writing a story. So if details I've used for place names, and tribal names and whatever are wrong then just (correctly) assume I have no idea what I'm doing.
Rating: 15 by English standards (mainly for language)
Chapter 15c:
Outside the cave
Xander sprinted in the direction of the blue portal as fast as he could. His lone eye watching the ground carefully, partially so he could avoid tripping on any uneven patches of earth and secondly to help ignore the strange sunlight that the surrounding area was bathed in.
'Least it's still light.' He immediately thought, mentally trying to estimate how many hours he'd spent talking with Brouhm. 'Then again, if this place is frozen in time then there might always be daylight here.'
As he approached his destination, he glanced upwards at his target. 'Definitely seems more stationary than on the other side.' He reasoned, as he examined the strange scene in front of him.
Without any hesitation, he closed his eyes and simply jumped into the portal when he was finally close enough to do so. Only two thoughts going through his mind. 'Hope this works and I hope they're still alive.'
Then he suddenly the portal seemed gain substance.
As he realised it was slowing him down, instinctively opened his eye. Nothing came into his line of vision except an overall feeling of blue. 'Moving blue.' He corrected himself, attempting to kick out with his legs to propel him further forwards.
Unfortunately his feet didn't seem to connect with anything solid, instead his legs felt like they were getting entangled in something sticky. 'Or possibly sludgy, maybe even vine-like.'
Whatever this stuff was, it only seemed to be trapping his limbs and torso. He couldn't feel anything touching his face. Something he was quite grateful for.
'That'd be all I need,' He thought sarcastically. 'Suffocating in an unidentified blue. Love to see the coroner's report as they try to explain that one.'
Just as he was about to continue that line of thought, his forward movements finally came to a stop. 'Noo!!!' He inwardly screamed, attempting unsuccessfully to shake his limbs free of their trappings.
An intense flash of light caused his to close his eye once more.
Then he had the brief feeling of falling, at the same as he opened the eye to confirm which side of the portal he was now on, his feet collided with solid ground.
Unprepared for the event, his found himself insinctively bending his knees and falling forwards, unable to correct the movement into anything resembling a controlled roll, he didn't the only thing he could think of and brought his hands up to absorb the impact of his fall.
Which led to his next surprise, his left hand went to the ground as it was instructed. Whereas his right discovered it had some problem doing so, the other end of whatever it was he was holding struck the ground a fraction of a second before his hand was expecting to do so. A result of this, was that he was suddenly off balance as his left side fell about a foot further than the right side of his body.
'I wasn't holding anything.' He tried to argue with the world as he landed hard on his left elbow.
Blinking off the after-images that the bright light had caused, he noticed his right hand was tightly gripping the crossbow he'd lost before travelling through the portal the first time.
Confirmation of what that meant came quickly, as he immediately recognised the interior of the apartment they were in.
Forcing himself to his feet, he analysed the room surrounding him. 'Mild damage.' He figured, mostly just happy that no corpses were in his immediate vicinity.
Picking up an axe with his free hand, he charged out of the apartment and onto the battlefield that awaited him.
His eye quickly adjusted the level of light outside the apartment, 'Surely it should be dark here..?' He thought, for a second time trying to work out how long he'd been gone.
Spotting his three colleagues quickly, his eye then came to rest upon the demon facing them from some distance away.
'Why hasn't it attacked..?' He thought before ordering them. "Get inside, I'll hold it off while you see if you can work out how to drag Faith out of there."
He spotted them all turn to face him. Wide-eyed looks were evident on both Roger's and Amy's faces, whereas Shote quickly turned his attention back to the demon.
"Get inside!" He repeated as he saw the demon begin to charge. Stepping out of the doorway and gesturing for them to go past. Spotting the creature was moving towards Shote, he started to run in an attempt to intercept.
Suddenly a flash of yellow passed in front of his vision and collided solidly with the beast, knocking it off it's feet, it briefly flew through the air for a second or two before sliding to a stop quite a few metres away from where it'd originally been hit.
Turning around, he spotted a similar light source eminating from Shote's hands before fading to nothing. He watched mesmorised as Shote flexed his fingers a few times before nodding in his direction. 'Magic-user of some sort, nice.' He figured, automatically increasing their chances of survival. Turning towards the remaining two, he pointed back at the apartment with the axe in his hand. "Work on getting Faith out of there." He instructed them. "We'll see if we can't stop it."
Unknown location
Tu'ron lay in her bed, clenching her teeth as she desperately tried to ignore the pain in her leg.
'Haven't you got any fucking painkillers..?' Faith wanted to scream, their shared connection letting her feel exactly how Tu'ron was suffering. 'Some ancient mystical shit..? Weird plant-roots or something..?'
She felt like she had a fever, she was sweating all the time, and she swore her blood felt like it was boiling. It was only then that Faith realised that neither herself nor Tu'ron had ever been ill since becoming Slayers. 'Guess it's the Slayer mojo working overtime... anyway, who needs a superhero with the flu... this isn't some Spiderman comic.'
Beside her, Merkak examined what remained of the scratches on her arm. "I think the physical damage is done here." The other woman stated confidently. "With time, the leg should recover the same."
'Of course her arm's nearly recovered.' Faith argued, 'It only caught some glancing scrapes and cuts from the fucking demon. Her thigh however, fucking impaled itself on the little bastard's spike when she tried to kick it's head off.'
"I was lucky." Tu'ron stated aloud, a sad tone obvious in her voice.
"We designed you to be immortal." Merkak corrected her. "Otherwise you would have shared the fate of some of the others."
'Yeah.' Faith thought sadly. There had been a new breed of man-demon in the area, it had been seen fighting with the Unseen Threat and as there were relatively few of them they'd welcomed the newcomers to their ever-increasing camp.
The demons, who called themselves the Hala Tun, were able to spring hidden spikes from their forearms to defend themselves.
What was unknown for the first few weeks after their arrival was that these Hala Tun needed to feed off of humans at least once a month. No-one was sure exactly what they were doing to their prey, but the number of sicknesses within the camp increased. Sicknesses that people normally got over fairly well.
'I'm no doctor, but I'd guess they're eating people's bone marrow.' Faith thought back over some of the symptoms she'd both seen and heard about, everything pointed to a weakening of the immune system. 'Unless AIDS came about by a method that no doctor or even any conspiracy theorist has ever suggested.'
When one of the demons had been caught feeding off a human, the group was confronted.
'Fucking typical.' Faith thought bitterly. 'They weren't fighting the vamps cos they're on our side, they were getting rid of the only competition to their food source.'
It was in that initial confrontation that they discovered something else about the Hala Tun. The spikes contained a poison that paralysed their victims, giving them time to feed.
This poison was even effective against the Braka.
Anyone, human or Braka, receiving a powerful enough dose had slipped into a coma.
'Something I'm intimately familiar with.' Faith sighed desperately.
The only difference was that the Braka needed a more powerful dose, and that the Hala Tun did not feed off them when they were down for the count.
So far no-one had regained consciousness whether they were fed on or not, those that only had enough of a dose to hurt them still complained that the pain they had felt hadn't eased off at all since they'd been injured.
But now that the Hala Tun had been removed, and the whole camp had been made aware of the threat, Faith had only one concern on her mind.
Tu'ron had received by far the largest dose of all. The spike had actually snapped off, about three inches of it remaining embedded in her thigh til after the battle was over. She had no idea how much poison had actually infected Tu'ron, it seemed to burn on the inside attacking her whole neurological system at once. But other than the wounds sustained in the fight, Tu'ron appeared to be unaffected by any other symptoms.
She'd picked up no illnesses, but that wasn't a surprise as she hadn't been fed off.
Unlike others though, her injuries were healing. But again, that could be explained by having a superior Slayer healing factor.
She wasn't certain if she was imagining it or not, but she felt like the pain was subsiding slightly with each passing day. That only concerned her slightly, again it could just be the advanced capabilities of a Slayer's healing factor, or maybe she was just getting used to it. If it was just the Slayer's healing factor, then hopefully some of the others would heal in time as their bodies processed the poison.
Oddly it was the lack of coma that concerned Faith most. She knew first-hand that a Slayer can suffer from a coma.
But Tu'ron hadn't.
And Merkak's soothing words haunted Faith's thoughts. 'We designed you to be immortal.'
'What if she's right..?' Faith turned the phrase over and over in her head. 'I was so sure that Tu'ron was the First Slayer... the girl we all came from.'
'But Slayer's aren't immortal, so if she is immortal, then what happened..?'
Outside the apartment
"We'll see if we can't stop it." Xander informed them as he pointed an axe past them and in the general direction of the apartment.
Amy instinctively turned towards the entrance. Part of her wanting to seek safety and comfort, but another defiant part of her, currently fueled by adrenalin, desperately not wanting to miss out on the battle, unwilling to be relegated to any safe role like those her parents tried to force her into.
Luckily common sense and practicality overruled her rebellious instincts. 'A Field Watcher does not sacrifice themselves stupidly... that's the sort of thing a Research Watcher would do in their idiotic attempts to play hero.'
Reaching behind her she grabbed Roger by the sleeve and dragged him in the direction of the open door. She was relieved when he offered no resistance, and simply followed her towards the doorway.
'A Field Watcher's role is to provide the best support possible for their Slayer.' She reasoned, 'And in this case it means getting the Slayer back into the fight.'
As she entered the room, she released her tight grip on Roger's arm.
'Where did Xander come in..?' She mused as she cast her eyes around the room, racking her brains as she tried to figure out how she was supposed to get Faith back. 'Concentrate on the problem at hand.'
Her gaze fell on several pieces of weaponry and dismissed them.
Then she spotted the laptop, automatically heading for it before realising there was better source for any answers to her problem.
Glancing around the room quickly, she scanned all desktops and work surfaces for any sign of the book that she'd had to translate. 'Where did I put it..?' She thought, as she methodically retraced it's steps in her memory.
Suddenly she remembered the last place she'd seen the book. "Roger. Where's the book you used to create the portal..?"
"Ermm..." Began the reply, as she turned to face the older man. "I dropped it over there somewhere when all hell started to break loose."
Following the direction in which his finger pointed, she spotted it on the floor. Running over to it and picking it up she quickly began to flick through the pages.
"It's empty!" She screamed frustratedly in her colleagues direction.
"Arse." Roger replied, then moved towards where he kept the shotgun pellets.
Desperately turning every single page as carefully, but as quickly as she could, she confirmed that the book was now totally blank. 'They told you this would happen.' Her brain reminded her. She was about to move towards her notes, before realising that in their hurry she'd only translated the pages referring to opening the portal and how to begin the exchange. 'Well, we've exchanged.' She thought. 'So how do we return the goods..?'
"I should have translated the whole thing." She muttered desperately.
"What..?" Came Roger's response and he snapped the shotgun shut.
Amy was about to reply when she suddenly felt a chill in the room.
Looking across at Roger to check she wasn't imagining things, she spotted that as he exhaled she could clearly see his breath. Staring down past her nose, she performed the same action and was once again treated to a small fog of water-vapour as her breath condensced. 'We're in Africa.' Her mind pointed out upon registering the insanity of the act.
"What's going on now..?" Her colleague asked, apparently having also spotted the phenomenon.
"I don't know." She replied, picking up her notes as she ran past him. "And I'm not sure we want to be here when we find out."
They stopped at the door. Roger raised his weapon as he watched the battle unfold in front of them.
Amy simply watched as Xander swung his axe at the demon, as it turned to defend itself Amy spotted the crossbow bolt sticking out of it's right shoulder blade.
The axe dug into the creature's forearm, it screamed as it lashed out with it's other, very heavily muscled, arm knocking Xander backwards towards one of the other buildings.
She heard Roger sigh, before beginning to aim his shotgun at the beast.
Before it could close down on Xander's position though, it was struck by a large football-sized globe of yellow light which battered it away from her downed colleague.
'How has no-one not heard this whole racket..?' She wondered, hoping anyone that did had the good sense to stay inside.
Then she shivered as the cold air seemed to blow through the doorway, heading past her towards the dueling combatants.
End chapter 15c