Xander smiled as he saw the costume. It would have normally been really out of his price range, but everything was half off, and Ethan, the owner, had said that he'd give him another half off after that for being a friend of Rupert Giles.
The costume had him drooling from the moment he saw it, and it was no mere soldier boy. This was a whole new level above that, and without the order following stupidity of the military at large.
He smirked as he watched the kids. Suddenly he felt pain as he dropped to his knees with a gasp as he clutched his chest, weapon falling to the ground with a clatter. Then blackness took him.
The entity that was then there crawled to his feet and seemed to slowly distort and then vanish from sight as he snatched up the rifle that lay on the ground. A wicked smile crossed his lips behind the helmets faceplate as he surveyed his surroundings.
"What the hell is going on," he muttered to himself as he watched a red colored creature leaping for a kid and fired two shots, dropping it with ease as he closed his eyes and reached out with his other senses, "Even the Dark Archons can't create something this messed up."
He moved through the shadows, the darkness hiding the slight blur his passing caused. The Gauss rifle was ready as he checked the various gear he had built into both his weapon and armor. The hud showed brackets around everything that moved as the light enhansements made the shadows vanish to his eyes.
He fired at those that threatened others, his training riding out other considerations of avoiding it. Ever since the fall of the capital after that bastard sacrificed one of the others to plant the psiemmitter, he would not watch another civilian die to monsters if he could help it. He saw her being dragged down by the beasts and shredded.
Then he sensed something completely wrong in his mind, it felt like a constant death, only once had he felt something like it before and that was someone he had tried to stabilize with his gifts, praying for a medic to come and help. It didn't and his link felt the man die before he seperated.
A scream drew his attention and his mind identified the situation. One girl dressed up as either late seventeenth century or early eighteenth century nobility, and was being chased by the oddest combination of creatures, including several that felt like constant death.
He moved, his gift amping his speed up to a mere blur even if he was not cloaked, but with it, there was not a sign that he was moving, the sound dampeners removing even the sound of footfalls across the fallen leaves. The power flashing through him and how he felt, the anger and cold fury had been enough to make those who went up against him name him Azrael, he was the Angel of Death.
He dropped into intercept position, chambering a grenade and firing into the pursuers. The blast shredded a dozen foes as he switched to the main part of the weapon. The enemies scattered as an invisible foe ripped through them.
Spike panicked and ran for it, most of the little kids turned monsters followed him as they entered an abandoned warehouse and tried to set up an ambush.
The cloaked warrior had other ideas as he armed the targeting laser.
"Call down the thunder," he chuckled as the cloak swirled away from him, a red dot appearing on the roof of the warehouse, "I'll reap the whirlwind."
He heard the oddly calmingand yet utterly electronic and female voice chime in with a phrase that still brought a smile to his lips, "Nuclear Launch Detected."
The trooper ran for it like his life depended on it, which in fact, it did. The sky seemed to open up for a moment as a fireball appeared high in the sky.
Spike glanced out the window and stepped outside when he saw nothing, Drusilla following a half second later.
"Spikey, the angry spirit is gonna bring a star down on us," she almost sang to the bleached blond.
He looked up and visibly gulped, "For once I say your right!"
Then the world dissolved into white as the warehouse detonated witht he tactical nuke going off. The shockwave tore through all the windows in town as the nearby buildings collapsed from the strike.
The armored being scanned his surroundings once more as he crawled out from under the rubble.
"Perhaps I was a bit hasty with that, fired to close, but it was still worth it," he laughed as he powered down the targeting laser, "Talk about bang for your buck!"
He cloaked again, shifting unconsciously back into hunter mode to look for more things that threatened it.
Then he felt something, a high concentration of the same energy he got off most of the odd beings, perhaps it was a beacon of somekind that trapped people and dragged them here. A wicked grin crossed his lips as he read the designator, he still had a nuke remaining and the fun was about to begin.
Mayor Wilkins groaned as he used a spell to clear his eyes, whatever the hell had been unleashed was annoying him.
"I mean really," he muttered, "Who in a small town deserves to get hit with a nuke?"
He used a teleport spell to go to the source of the overall spell, afterall, what kind of mayor lets people drop nukes on it.
Ethan swallowed hard as he watched the rubble raining from the sky. He was currently wondering just what on earth had been the costume that decided to bring this level of destruction down on the town.
He couldn't remember selling any costume that came equipped with anything of that calibur, magically yes, but nothing came armed with...
His mind remembered something as he flipped through the book with costume descriptions and his eyes almost popped out.
He was so screwed, nukes, cloaking, and psionic talents didn't bode to well for him if the guy figured it out. Then he saw a character description of the specific one.
"Azrael, the fucking Angel of Death!" he yelped as he collapsed, "This isn't even chaos, it's unleashing something that'll wreck the balance, Janus needs the balance as much as nearly anything else."
He started to move to the bust, realizing that he had to stop the spell immediately.
"Now then, mage what are you doing," a voice reached him and a chill hit his spine, it was the Mayor.
"Just admiring the artwork," Ethan stammered, he didn't know what the Mayor knew but this was dangerous.
Then he saw a red dot appear on the bust and blinked.
"What the..."
The mayor waved a hand in front of it, the dot appearing on his hand as he turned to follow it and audibly gulped, "Not good!"
"Oh fuck," Ethan stammered just before the second nuke came down upon the building and the world shattered around them.
And as the light faded, Xander was on his knees, yanking off the helmet with the still active HUD gasping for air and vomiting on the ground.
Xander chuckled the next morning, the first happy thought he'd had since he became Xander again rather than Azrael. And what was funny was the fact that he noticed the nuke counter refill in the helmet and he dropped the blockes on his mental gifts for a mere instant.
The demons wouldn't know what hit them. There was a Ghost on the Hellmouth.
Years later, the first evil was trying to release an army, thousands of super vampires that just waited to be released. He had planned for everything he could have thought native to the world, but for the dark being, he had missed something that came through the intervention of chaos.
Azrael armed the targeting laser from the farthest distance he could, "Boom baby!"