Faith woke up in a bad mood, ready to kill. She was often like this when awoken suddenly, which is why her mates had quickly learned to wake her from a distance, with a good thick wall between them. Ah yes, the joy of intercom's.
"This had better be good." Faith mumbled into the phone. Anya started to cuddle up to her, cupping her left breast with one hand, the other over Amanda. "We just got to sleep."
"Faith, its Angel." That made her sit up in bed, and Anya grumbled about the cold before pulling the blankets over her. "Sorry to disturb your domestic bliss but Cordellia had a vision, and you need to get moving now."
"Anything for you fang." Which was almost literally true, Angel had been her only friend through her prison years, the only person who thought she could be redeemed. She owed the souled vampire more than she could ever repay. "Where and when?"
"The Sunnydale High ruins, 10 minutes from now, a man in a suit, several vampires to fight and bring him to Giles, GO NOW!"
The sense of urgency in his voice was reasonable now, time was short. Faith put on a t-shirt and pants and ran to her car, grabbing her "tool bag", with her weapons in it, on the way. Her car was outside, tuned to perfection and ready to go as always.
Redlining the cold engine was a terrible thing to do to it, but she made the trip in the darkened autumn streets just in time. A dark haired man was shooting at vampires and, of course, just pissing them off.
Fox Mulder was resigned to a violent death when the girl arrived and started killing his attackers. They just disappeared into dust before his eyes, it was incredible. Sixteen 9mm rounds had had no effect at all, but a teenage girl with a stick killed all of them before her could even wonder who she was. An X-File in the making, and only him as an unemployed drifter to investigate it.
"Hi, I'm Faith, I was told to handle these guys and get you to a friend of mine." The dark slayer looked the man over, he looked like a cop, maybe a fed. There was no car visible, he must have walked to the old high school at 4 in the morning, alone. She opened the car door. "Get in and lets boogie, Giles needs to talk to you, apparently."
Little was said on the trip over, except for introductions. The guy was a fed, or at least had been one until recently, assigned to investigate strange phenomena, and had come here to investigate all the rumors of strange going's on over the years.
"Giles, open up it's Faith." The lights were on in the older man's apartment, presumably the souled vampire had rung here too. "One ex-FBI agent, delivered as per instructions from Fang..."
Her voice trailed off as she saw the look on each man's face. Then they walked over and hugged, like long lost brothers. Mulder was crying, the tension in him since they had met gone. He sank into the couch and reloaded his Glock, then the magazine emptied at the vamps, clearly a reflex action.
"Damn Ripper, I never thought I would see you again. And where's the bike, that 750 Norton was usually parked in your hall when it wasn't in parts on the floor, as I recall."
That a man who had just been saved from a group of vampires did not ask for an explanation was interesting to the only female in the room. That he only knew Giles as Ripper was fascinating, and possibly full of fascinating tidbits.
"You owned a 750 Norton, what a Commando?" Faith knew something about motorcycles, from hanging out with bikers before becoming slayer. Mainly Harley's of course, but the old British brands were known to her. "You kept it INSIDE your apartment?"
"Yes Faith, it was a 750 Commando, and of course I kept it inside, you wouldn't expect me to keep the fastest bike in production parked outside would you?" Giles was clearly proud that his daughter knew more about 'bikes than most Americans, who didn't seem to know Britain HAD a motorcycle industry, let alone what it produced.
"Well you keep the BMW outside, you didn't rent a garage for it or anything."
"It's just a cage, I need to move things like crossbow's and swords so I need a car." Faith recognized the mentality immediately, 'cars are for carrying beer and children' was the old quote. "Why do you think I was content with the other one? It was perfectly boring, the police never considered it might hold concealed weapons."
In the mean time Mulder was looking about him with amazement. Ripper, his old Oxford friend, the only person he had been able to talk about all his theories, was wearing tweed at four thirty in the morning, and casually talking bikes with a girl with superhuman speed and strength, who fought and killed things that shrugged off bullets. But it was Ripper, the only person other than Scully who had never let him down. The phone rang.
"Hello, yes Angel, Faith saved him, and it turns out he is an old friend of mine."
"How did you know where I was?" The former agent spoke quietly to his rescuer, as the phone conversation continued. Mulder trusted Ripper, but the rescue had been awfully convenient, hadn't it. "And who is Ripper talking to, it's not really and angel surely?"
"No, Angel is a vampire who runs a private detective agency in LA. His seer had a vision of you being attacked by vampires, so he called me to handle it and get you here."
Well, that certainly raised the number of x-files to investigate here, didn't it. The sun was not up yet, and he had vampire attacks, Seers, inhumanly strong vampire fighters, and Ripper in tweed to investigate.
"Why would a vampire call you to protect me from other vampires?'
"Well Angel had his soul returned to him, twice actually." Faith was enjoying wigging the older guy out, the look his face was getting was priceless. "The most recent time was by a Lesbian Witch friend of ours returned it. He was a totally different man after he returned from Hell, honestly."
Add claims of proof of the existence of the human soul, an escapee from Hell and witchcraft to the list of investigations.
There was a knock on the door, which Faith answered partly so she could stop holding a straight face. It was Amanda, Anya and Xander, all looking concerned, but not too worried.
"Angel called and said to come over, we have to help recruit 'the living dead man'." Xander was especially exasperated. "Its not like Sunnydale has any shortage of the living dead after all, where do we start?"
"Would everyone come into the room please, some explanations are in order?" Giles was at his most commanding, in that he actually had a command obeyed for once. Willow, Tara, Buffy and Dawn all walked in too, clearly Angel had made a lot of phone calls based on one vision this morning.
"Everyone, this is Fox Mulder, formerly of the FBI. He investigated paranormal phenomena and the alien invasion conspiracy while there. He is now unemployed, and no-longer human, like so many in this room now."
"What do you mean, no longer human." And what did he mean by, '...like so many in this room', they looked like a fairly normal bunch.
"One of the signs of The Final Days, according to the most ancient prophecies, is the arrival of 'the living dead man' My friend Mulder died, in the sense of existing as a human, when he became a human/alien hybred, a few years ago. His humanity sufficiently returned to allow him to function, and than he died and was burried for some months after being returned after being kidnapped by aliens. He has a child, by a sterile woman, that has the power to repell demons of various kinds simply by being in the same general vicinity"
Tara was impressed, this man clearly was almost odd enough to fit in around here. Giles finished talking, and started to introduce the people in the room to his old friend.
"Mulder, this is Faith, the Vampire slayer, my daughter. The woman holding her hand is Amanda, her lesbian succubus wife. Next to Amanda is Anya, her other wife, and formerly the 1100year old vengeance demon Anyanka. The young man next to Anya is the first three womens husband, Xander Harris, who is apprenticed to Leonardo Da Vinci. The red headed woman is Willow Rosenberg, like her lover next to her a powerful witch, but trying to go cold turkey on magick right now. Finally, but by no means last is Buffy and Dawn Summers. Buffy is also a vampire slayer, and Dawn is a human embodyment of a mystical energy field known as 'the key'."
Mulder was, not entirely surprisingly, overwhelmed. He now had enough x-files to keep him going for years, and it was not even light out yet. He should have just moved here and never bothered with the FBI at all.
"I have explained the situation to you because we need you on the side of light. Angel, the souled vampire I believe Faith has told you about, needs an east coast office, due to the cases his occuring there that he, based in Los Angeles, cannot deal with."
The crowded room was silent, no-one had expected to see some poor boob be asked to volunteer for Scooby duty while too overloaded by strangeness to think straight. Clearly Giles either trusted this man implicitly, or wanted him in an alley with twin puncture wounds on his corpse.
"I'll need a lot fuller explanation than you just gave Ripper." Did he want to be employed by a recent escapee from Hell, a vampire no less? Well at least it would be an improvement over A.D. Kirsh.
"Oh of course, Angel and I will train you, and various members of the group will be able to assist you after you move back to Washington, including Cordellia's visions, of course." Giles was smiling a smile only those pure of heart, and P.T Barnum at his 'There's one born every minute' best could master.
"Welcome aboard, Fox."