The fires burned in patches among the shattered remains of Sunnydale High. The mayor was dead, his carcass being removed by people who gave no meaningful explanation of who they were. They had authorization recognized by the fire chief, which was enough to get the co-operation of the fire fighters, who really just wanted to keep sightseers out of the way.
Xander stood and watched it, while his injuries were treated. He would normally be taken to hospital as part of this sort of thing, but they were already full up, and his wounds were superficial. At least, the ones you could see were. Buffy had never came out of the library, and the zeppo had been forced to detonate the charges anyway as Giles waited for her even with the Mayor's head smashing out the wall.
He would carry the scars from that till he died. He had done his part well; casualties were light, much lower than his soldier possession memories had calculated were probable before the fight. Giles had been crying, staring at him, then the wreckage of the school, then back at him, before breaking down. Angel and Cordelia had gotten out of it intact, Wesley was carried away in the same ambulance as Willow, and Oz was missing in action.
Hopefully MIA, in this case, did not mean he was in the Mayor's digestive tract. Or turned by the vampires, which he had actually been closer to. Briefly the youngest Harris wondered what happened to werewolves that were turned. Giles would know, or be able to find out, but right now the former watcher was heavily tranquilized, and under observation in hospital. Angel had had been in similar shape, but not tranquilized, when he had called Xander a murderer, and stumbled off with Cordelia holding him up.
"Where were you Buffster, where were you?" Eaten, or hiding among the explosives as the Mayor demon, recognizing the library for the trap it was, cut off her escape route by trying to make it his own? Was she angry at the demon, at herself for not getting out in time? Was she waiting for the bomb to go off, or for a rescue that would never come? "I'm sorry I had to kill you, but you know I had to."
"I am sure she does." It was a man in a suit. "Xander Harris, we would like to offer you a job."
The small tropical fish were the blaze of bright colors he had expected, blue with yellow stripes being his favorite. But the most interesting ones were the brown with blue spots, because, every single time he encountered them, one of the group, and only one, separated off, swam up to him, and stuck its nose up to the face plate of his mask, staring in at him. Only ever the one, always one, and only that species. As a student of non-human intelligence, it fascinated him.
And it was cute, which most of the non-human intelligence Alexander Lavelle Harris had studied over the years certainly were not. Consider the Feyoral demon, or, better yet, don't. He wished he didn't have to, after all. Eventually he swam to the shore, showered, and went to lunch. That was where they found him.
"Xander Harris?"
"On vacation, as you can plainly see." It wasn't like he had a superior officer to report to, he was a contractor, technically a mercenary. Why were they bothering over lunch, he had come here partly because Club Med doe not allow phones, television, radio, newspapers... He was on vacation, damn it.
"We have someone for you to orient, and you can do it here as well as anywhere." They were walking through the grounds, and, given that October is the middle of spring in the Southern Hemisphere and it was the tropics, it was hot and humid.
"You want me to break in a newbie to demon slaying, and you want me to do it at in a tropical paradise." The logic behind this should be interesting to hear. Most recruits were veterans of one form or another, orientation was to the 'Company' way of doing things, at 'the farm', the old CIA training camp in Virginia.
"It's more complicated than that, but when you see her you will understand."
Xander had done a lot of interesting things since that final day in Sunnydale, some of them were even legal. Breaking in new operatives was not an unfamiliar chore; he had wound up being central to the creation of the training regime, or rather its redesign. The disaster at the Initiative had taught the desk jockey's a brutal lesson in reality, especially since by chance most of the high ranking supporters of Maggie Walsh's way of doing things were IN the Initiative complex when ADAM took over.
"It's complicated, you are breaking into my holiday, and you won't explain what's going on. None of this has happy precedents." The contractor said, since in his experience any one of these meant something BIG had gone wrong. The whole disaster with Walsh and ADAM had been the last time all had been used at the same time.
Idly he wondered if the binary nerve gas weapons had gotten any lighter, sneaking in through Lowell House with that one had been a nightmare. At least it had been quiet, unlike the bunker buster bomb and infantry assault that was the alternative.
"So why the secrecy?" They were nearly back at his bungalow now, and he wanted to know avoid surprises. Surprising people with hair trigger killing reflexes is never a good idea.
"BOYTOY!" Faith jumped into his arms, hugging him tight and kissing him passionately. Eventually she stopped, and Xander turned to the suits again.
"Let me get this straight. You got Faith out of prison to join the monster squad."
They nodded, as the group moved into the bungalow. The man in the other guest quarters had been moved out already, and the dark slayer's gear was in there, except for some personal things in what was clearly now THEIR bedroom.
"And you want me to handle her orientation because she's going to be, what, my partner?"
The suits nodded again.
"How long do I have?"
"As long as needed, we assume a month or two, on full pay of course. Given how special an asset one of the two slayers will be, and the special problems involved we think, frankly, you are the only person with clearance that can handle it."
Faith was nowhere near as self confident as she was pretending to be, he could see that as soon as she had taken her tongue out of his mouth outside. Getting her up to speed meant more than the usual, 'no, you're not the victims of an elaborate practical joke, vampires and demons are real and we want you to help fight them' speech.
The desperate need for forgiveness in her eyes said a lot. Yes, he understood that better than most, certainly better than anyone who knew both Faith, and the demon problem. The battle, Giles not detonating the explosives even with the wall crumbling, pushing the plunger, the look in his father figures face...
"You want me to spend a few months in Tahiti with Faith, at full contract rates." $2000.00 a week, plus all expenses.
"We do owe you rather a great deal after that shit storm in Bolivia, and Miss Faith needs to get used to freedom again, as well as the consequences of failing US." The second suit said.
The demon army that had been building had acquired an awful lot of wealth, enough to finance and army, of course. As a contractor he was entitled to a percentage of anything recovered.
"And our psychologists insist that BOTH of you have to face your former colleagues in arms in Sunnydale again."
"Is that part of the contract for this job?" Always get things spelled out clearly, especially in a contract with the Company.
"Yes, it is felt necessary for your long term usefulness." The first shrink had phrased it as 'needing to face your personal demons', and not understood when he broke up laughing. Xander wondered if they all still hated him for killing Buffy.
Certainly he still did.
"Well, let me see the paperwork." Faith relaxed, she had been worried about him refusing to work with her, or killing her. He had no plans to do either. Yet.
Xander jogged along, in the tropical heat and light rain, Faith was at his side. They did this every day, at 7.30 am, finishing with a swim in the lagoon, then went to breakfast. It was a fitness routine, of course, but it was the routine that he thought was important to the slayer. She had thought of doing things this way, it was therefore a way for Faith to take charge of something, and, fresh from prison, she needed it. Three years, nearly, of not having any control over anything except the cleanliness of your cell does odd things to people, they need to control things.
Some people complain about the rain in the tropics, as if it is unexpected. He had been here enough to know you get a lot of all sorts of things in a tropical area, or at least a lush tropical area. Like the smell of the wildflowers that was everywhere, or the heat, it was proof of life to him. If the insects were annoying, they were alive and annoying, and he had had far too much dead and annoying in his life to not celebrate the life. He needed the reminder of what he was fighting for, it was life, especially human life, and Tahiti is a great place to indulge just soaking in the life of everything.
They jogged on down the track, looping around the club area before reaching the beach, barely stopping long enough to take off his running shoes and shorts, before diving into the water. It was warm enough so that there was none of the shock of jumping into the ocean you usually get, and he swam under the water for a while before surfacing.
Faith and Xander sat on opposite sides of the table, intended, like all the club tables to sit eight so that no one ate alone. Most people had left for sports,swimming or sex, but he liked it here, watching the surf break on the reef. It started on the far left, the wave breaking to the right as it hit the reef that protected the lagoon. eventually the first motu, or island, interupted the breaker, but it started again between that and the second motu, then again after that island. By the time it had finished, the next was was breaking on the left again. He sipped his ice water, and watched, as did Faith, who was definitely more into the party end of things, but, after being sealed up in a concrete cage with only human predators for company, she clearly enjoyed it too.
"We have to go face them sooner or later Xman." the dark slayer said. She was sipping on a fruit juice mix, relaxing before another hectic day. Sex with Xander,snorkling, lunch, sex with Xander, snorkling, dinner, the live show, sex with Xander, and some sleep. It was a brutal schedule, but she endured it somehow.
"I know, but if we're lucky I can get us onto a suicide mission first." The scary thing was that he seemed totally serious, he had none of the joking tone she remembered. "With any luck neither of us will be alive to HAVE to talk to them."
He seemed genuinely cheered up by the prospect. Ok Faith, she thought, so, exactly which of us is the possibly unstable killer here? The guy faces down demons and vampire packs for a living, and he's afraid to face his high school friends?
"Boytoy, they can't hate you that much, I mean, red is perfectly capable of finding you anywhere you hide, you've seen the reports on her magic powers." Faith commented. The witch had grown enormously powerful over the years, and his Company contacts kept careful track of Sunnydale activities. "So since you're still alive, and not begging to be killed, she can't have too much against you."
They were free to talk here, he came to this place between missions often enough, and was 'consulted' by various individuals with government number plates and shoulder holsters often enough, that no one questioned him. Either they assumed the casual talk of nerve gassing secret US Government installations because demons had taken them over was a series of code phrases, or the French really do have a twisted and hostile view of America.
"The simple fact is I'm scared." It had taken a lot of soul searching before he was able to admit that about himself to himself. "As long as I don't meet them I can have the fantasy of their acceptance. But if I go back, I get Giles chasing me with an axe for murdering Buffy, and Willow shouting at me."
"And then turning you into a wharf rat." Faith added. Willow really had built quite a reputation over the years.
"That too."
"Lets go to our cabin and fuck."
"Ok."
"What happens if he comes back again Giles, what do we do?" Willow Rosenberg sat at her usual place, the table where research was done next to Tara,who had just arrived. Her walking sticks were next to her, though she hardly needed them at all these days. Getting out of the wheelchair had been a big morale booster, it had made everything else seem possible and so her progress had improved. Finally learning that her childhood friend had been the mysterious anonymous benefactor paying for her rehabilitation was almost as much of a boost, in its own way.
Especially when you considered what he had done the last time he was in town. They had SEEN the bodies hauled out of the concrete tomb his nerve gas had turned the Initiative complex into. There had still been humans down there. Xander had money, from somewhere, and contacts that could get binary nerve gas, which was so closely controlled it had never, offically, been issued to troops. In fact the United States had destroyed all Chemical and biological warfare agents in the 80's, so where did he get the stuff from?
Buffy's death still hung over all of them, over every thought of her childhood friend. After graduation she had been in hospital for a long time, orphaned by the Vampires that had killed Oz. The only time in highschool her parents had bothered to go to a school function... Giles had a breakdown, of sorts, but kept up the british Stiff Upper Lip thing because she needed him. Buffy's remains could only be identified by DNA testing, Oz had died from the werewolf rejecting the vampire demon, Cordelia was in LA with Angel, who's own sanity was questionable a lot of the time. So the fact that Xander had not gone on his much mentioned around America trip had not registered at first. Eventually she had done a locating spell, when he was not back after six months and everyone had calmed down a bit.
Angel had actually stopped habitually refering to Xander as 'that scum', which was a big step forward. An insane, grief stricken vampire is no great boon to society, and not fun to be around. If patience is a virtue than Cordy must be one of the most virtuous women on the planet, though persuading him to take Doyle up on the Private Detective thing had helped him focus on something other than his own pain. Giles could think about Buffy without crying now, and Sally, the slayer that replaced her, was still alive and staking, a major source of pride.
As for the red headed Wicca, she was not who she had been. Opening the portal and firing Glory and her minions through it like they were shot out of a cannon was not the old Willow. Probably would not have been the current Willow, without the constant reminder of how much they needed more magical firepower to sharpen her edge and save her from magic addiction, which was rumoured to be really bad.
"What are you now Xander, should I fear you or hate you for leaving, maybe love you and fear you're never coming back?" She was mumbling to herself, but Tara gripped her had and kissed her softly on the cheek.
"Willow, it will be allright. Your friend will be here soon, I know."
"How, did you sense it with a magic spell?" Willow asked.
"Did you find a prophecy requiring it?" Giles inquired.
"Talk to some Demons who are tracking him 'cause they're so scared of him?" Dawn, Willow's 'sister', and interdimensional key, asked. She always had romantic visions of the man she remembered without ever actually having met. Some kind of secret agent was her usual dream.
"Ah, no, not actually." The larger wicca was nervous. "He emailed me, I read it it just before I came in a few minutes ago. He's coming in by plane tommorrow, with that girl Faith you keep mentioning."
"FAITH!" Willow shouted. "That's impossible, she died in prison, I even hacked into the system to make sure, tricked the computer into ordering a DNA test, she's dead and not as a vampire."
"Faked death with forged documents, right down to anything you can get into on the net." The youngest Rosenberg said in triumph. "Told you he's a spy."
"Why would they come here now? After being away so long, what would bring them?" Willow wondered aloud.
"A prophecy." Giles pronounced. "We need do seem to have a problem though, since it requires Five slayers."
"So we're short three slayers." Sally, the slayer who had replace Buffy, said. She had just come in from the training room in time to hear the conversation.
"Yes, it would seem so." the librarian responded.
"Agent Harris, you have problem." The phone had rung a few minutes ago, waking them up from a deep sleep. The voice on the phone was Jack Ryan, however, so he knew it wasn't a joke call or anything petty.
"Sir, what is it."
"A prophecy requiring Faith to join in a fight to save the world."
"Sounds like a normal week so far."
"A world where your friend Buffy died at the graduation ceremony."
While he had not paid over much attention in class, the former zeppo had paid quite enough attention in Star Trek and Quantum Leap reruns to see where this was going.
"So, its a cross reality jump then." He said confidently.
"Ah, well yes, that is what it took our researchers all of the last month to realise yes." Deputy Director, Intelligence, of the CIA John Patrick Ryan was once again reminded of why he had this kid on the payroll.
"How do we get there?" Faith spoke up, the phone could be re-set for conference calls, and she could hear it all.
"We have no idea."
The dark slayer sipped at her coffee and thought about what she had just been told. There was a prophecy that she would join several other Faiths' from alternate realities, probably in one of those alternatives, to fight something horrendous. And then there was the simple joys of 'entropic cascade failure' to consider. From Stargate team experience, if she traveled to a reality she already existed in, she would die quickly, so they were looking for some kind of loophole in that rule.
As of a few days ago, physics offered no hope, but, as Major Carter was the first to say, since they had no meaningful understanding of the physics involved that meant very little. For example, the elder Xander was from an alternate reality, and he had been just fine right up to the point where he vanished in mid word during a meeting. Trade missions to his reality had confirmed he arrived there in good health, but they had not retrieved him, he just turned up. Her bet was that it was the Powers That Be's way of saying his mission had succeeded, she had a weeks pay on it.
Strange things had been happening in general, not just about her and this five slayers thing. Daniel Jackson was gone, not dead, disappeared from the gate room at SGC. The team had been standing there, waiting to leave, and two people just appeared on the ramp, a guy with red hair, and a woman Xander described to her as 'seriously hot, for someone Daniel's age.'
"Harry, I know you came here to get away from all this, but Voldemort's back and we really need your help." She had said, in a very upper class English accent, and without much further discussion - the archaeologist in the same English accent, interestingly - he left with them. Just disappeared, though apparently General Hammond had received a letter, delivered by an owl, of all things, apologizing and saying he would be back ASAP.
Lieutenant Alexander Lavelle Harris had gone off anyway, since the show must go on, and all that. The war against the Goa'uld was drawing to a close, thanks to the nuclear pulse rifles brought in by Alternate Xander, with the parasites now an endangered species, and fighting all the harder for it. FACT - the highest death rates in a wartime military are among the junior officers and the replacements fresh out of training, survive the seasoning and your life expectancy improves radically. She worried about her husband, but he was not precisely new at risking his life, and it was still safer than fighting demons with bare hands and sharp sticks had been.
The phone rang.
"Deputy Harris, meet us at the entrance to Cheyenne mountain tomorrow morning at 0700 prepared for a long mission. We have your travel arrangements worked out." It was Colonel Carter, who had been working with Willow on the 'how to get there, and where is THERE anyway?' thing.
"OK."
It was early morning when the doorbell rang, and Xander got up to answer it. He opened the door to find two Faith's standing there, which was interesting since he had just gotten out of bed with Faith and Anya.
"Parallel reality, or am I hallucinating?
"Parallel reality, and we need your Faith to make the next part of the trip." The left hand Faith said, the one wearing the jacket with Marshall on it. Xander stood back but made no move to invite them in, a Sunnydale reflex. They went into the bedroom to find his Faith just waking up, and Anya getting into the shower ready for another busy day making money.
"Faith, meet Faith, and Faith. And that's Anya in the shower, incase one of you doesn't have her in your reality."
"Is she good in bed?" Deputy Marshall Harris said, walking over to the other Faith's bed. The slayer from the present reality was wide-awake now, reaching out with her slayer senses and not finding anything too she would not expect to under the circumstances. Finding nothing, she decided to make what she felt was the polite invitation.
"Anyone feel like an orgy before breakfast, Anya does this really great thing with her tongue?"
Slayer Lady Sally Ryan watched the much-heralded return of Xander Harris and Slayer Faith Morgan with mixed emotions. All that she knew about the pair was second hand, and much of it was negative. Not all of it, however, since the Council's connections with British Intelligence had their own connections with the CIA, or The Company, as people 'on the inside' always refer to it.
They said that Xander was totally trustworthy, - an almost unknown accolade from an organization of professional paranoids - and then immediately qualified that with a comment. 'If you detonate a 200kiloton thermonuclear warhead you can totally trust certain things to happen, you just have to decide ahead of time if you WANT them to happen,' was how one of them phrased it.
Giles, as her watcher, had access to the same information, she assumed, but she had informed him anyway, quietly. It was the former Scooby's 'if they were worried about collateral damage they wouldn't have hired me for the job' attitude that the rest were concerned about, or what they knew of it. She understood the attitude, while not totally sharing it. Sally's job was to save the world, she WAS going to be killed in action eventually, and she had been partly educated by some of her late father's old friends. He had died protecting others; she could do no less.
"Wills, god I missed you." He was hugging her tight, eyes closed, just enjoying the presence of his oldest friend. Then he pushed himself away, leaned over and shook Tara's hand. "Tara MacLay, glad I finally got the chance to meet the woman Willow loves."
It wasn't actually intended to keep everyone off balance, but that was the effect. At least, it was the effect on everyone except Dawn, who was smiling in vindication. Of course Xander was a spy, and for that matter, how interesting that neither Sally nor Giles seemed surprised by his knowledge.
"Why didn't you tell us you knew all about Xander Giles?" Was the question the younger Rosenburg asked. The others looked at her like she was crazy, then noticed the guilty look on his face, and the carefully blank one on the Sunnydale based slayer. "Sally, why did you leave us in the dark?"
"I was told exactly enough about Xander's activities to realize telling you about it would not help, and then there is the whole 'need to know' thing these days." The former librarian said, defending himself.
Sally's activation had triggered events that had changed the whole basis of Watching. She had, after all, been orphaned by her father's saving the heir to the British throne's life for a second time, and the Queen kept a discrete track of her in case she might need help. Royal dynasties don't survive by ignoring obligations of this kind, after all, and her being more or less kidnapped by a secret society had resulted in visits from heavily armed men in balaclava's and flack vests.
And some unfortunate fatal accidents to people like Quentin Travers, who insisted on maintaining ancient rituals and weapons at the expense of effectiveness, while refusing to retire. You can't make an ommelete without breaking eggs, and all that.
"Need to know." Was the younger slayer's comment, which was both the truth and an evasion. The Scooby's lived in a Sunnydale level of denial about their own contacts with the international intelligence community, which were at third hand admittedly. Her much closer contacts with the spooks - Admiral James Greer, head of the CIA, had attended her father's funeral - were not a topic much discussed.
"We didn't NEED TO KNOW that the man we were all worried about was safe and well?" The red head shouted. Faith stood back, ready to run if the witch started losing it. She had no way of controlling a rampaging Wicca except by killing her, which would probably not endear her to the rest of the gang. Giles kept the serving counter between him and his charge, ready to duck. Xander was wondering if he would be able to talk her down, or if he would have to kill an third close friend. Tara spoke.
"W, w, Willow, you don't handle things like this well."
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, I DON'T HANDLE IT WELL, I HANDLE IT FINE, I'M TOTALLY IN CONTROL!" The red headed witch said this with a blue ball of fire hovering over her hand, in a voice that rattled windows. She was scanning the room like the search radar for a guided missile, looking for the most appropriate target.
"Willow, I love you. You are my oldest friend, and I really don't want to have to dodge magical fire balls, so would you disarm that thing?" He was pointing to the magical weapon, which she didn't really seem consciously aware of.
The Wicca looked down at her hand, puzzled, as if seeing it for the first time. The blue fire went out, and she took a deep breath, part of her calming exercises. Breathe in slowly; breathe out slowly, breath in slowly, breath out slowly.
"Ok, you are all aware of the international legal status of vampires, right?" Xander asked confidently, to be met with puzzled looks from Willow, Tara, Dawn, and Giles. Slayer Ryan nodded, as in the files he had seen she took her duties seriously enough to pay attention to wider issues. "Ok, after the Watchers council was taken over by MI6, a secret international agreement was reached, classing Vamps as the common enemy of mankind, like pirates."
"There haven't been any pirates in centuries Xander." Dawn commented.
"Pirates attack shipping in South East Asia and the Caribbean all the time. But anyway, as a common enemy nations are obliged to destroy them wherever found, and co-operate in that." It said something about the people in the room that they had a harder time believing in humans who capture ships by force than in vampires and demons. "After I killed Buffy I was recruited by our friends in Langley, who had been monitoring our activities ever since the invisible girl thing and thought I had potential. I had to leave and they were offering money to fight vamps so I went."
"What friends in Langley?" Tara, who had really not been keeping up with events, asked.
"The CIA has its headquarter in Langley, Virginia. There's a sign on the freeway marking the right off-ramp and everything." Dawn said she had looked it up as part of her 'Xander is a spy' obsession. "So, Xander, you actually are a CIA agent, right?"
"I am not now, nor have I ever been, an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency." The man in question responded. "I am a contractor, and therefore not an employee, and my contracts are never with the company as such."
"Plausible deniability." The key responded confidently.
"Exactly." Faith said, wanting to add her part and having paid careful attention to exactly what she was, and was not, being offered as part of being let out of prison early.
"Xander, why didn't you call and say you were all right?" Willow was fighting tears, the emotional swings of the last ten minutes signs she was close to the edge. The spy technobabble was not helping in the least.
"I was alright, you were in a wheelchair, Giles was a step away from a padded cell, Oz was dead, and Angel was in the middle of a nervous breakdown. All my fault, how could I face you? And besides, you could and did do a locating spell, you knew I was alive, and I couldn't face you hating me, I just couldn't." The contractor was sitting at the table, wearily explaining himself. He half expected his red haired friend to kill him on the spot, but the prophecy was clear, it would not be tonight.
"You thought I'd kill you." The red head said, tears running down her face. "How could you think that?"
"I FAILED." Was the shouted response. "I got your parents and your boyfriend killed, among others. I personally killed Buffy, and you were all in hospital. How can you NOT want me dead?"
He was controlling himself like a man walking towards the gallows he will be hanged on.
"I failed, I was in charge of the students, the bomb was my idea, and I failed. Buffy should be here, Sally should not have to know there are vampires, Oz should be with the Dingoes, you should be able to walk without difficulty." Faith was massaging his shoulders, easing the tension. It was something he had taught her, having found that giving a good foot rub was a better way into a girls heart (among other places) than an expensive car could ever be. Relaxing tension was important, in a line of work where being less than 100% was a possible death sentence.
"I failed all of you. How can you not hate me?" He repeated it softly and slowly, genuinely wanting to know.
"Because you're Xander." Willow responded.
SG1 was nearly over the small rise, with the dark haired woman that had gotten them out of the pyramid ship, when the alarm sounded. Jaffa fired at them, as usual, and missed, mostly as usual - who trained these guys, the Imperial Stormtrooper School of Marksmanship? - When there was a flash of light and an explosion where they had been. Colonel Jack O'Neil kept running, even as he swung around to look behind him at the situation. Lack of situational awareness is something no commander should voluntarily be guilty of, in his opinion.
Barely visible lines of light were streaking from the two identical women on the crest of the ridge he was running up. Where the lines hit, there was an explosion, and Jaffa died. Reaching the crest he turned and, like the others, dropped down to put the ground between incoming fire and his body. Two death gliders came out of the carrier, and were destroyed by one of the women; the other was firing into the launch bay they had flown out of. There was a growing brightness, and he guessed where this was heading.
"Incoming." He shouted, tucked his head out of line of sight, hugging the dirt like he knew his team would. The explosion lit up the area, it was not quite the whole world turning perfect white described by nuclear test veterans, but it was as close as he ever wanted to get. The noise was like nothing he had experienced, more pressure than sound. He sneaked open one eye, just a little, and then the other.
"Damn Jack, you just can't stay out of trouble, can you?" One of his rescuers commented, and he realized with a start that they were identical. Three identical women - identical triplets? - in Stargate Command issue uniforms, one with the nametag 'Faith' on it, another 'AgentFaith' the third 'DeputyFaith'. It was AgentFaith who had spoken, and she was laughing as she helped them up and to the stargate.
Looking down, where there had been a Goa'uld Pyramid carrier ship, and a small army of Jaffa encamped around it, there was nothing but a crater. The forested hills were burning in numerous places where flaming wreckage had landed and started fires. If they got out quickly the surviving Jaffa would be too stunned to ambush them before they could get out.
"Who are you and what THE HELL kind of weapon is that." O'Neil asked.
"And can I have one for Christmas?" Daniel Jackson asked. Not normally the most flippant of men, or a gun nut, he was sick of being on the wrong end of a technological gap.
"Fusion pulse rifle, and I have all the information you need to make them standard issue to SG teams." AgentFaith replied. "As well as portable fusion reactors and shield generators, for that matter."
"Why would you give us that, and why rescue us?" Major Samantha Carter asked.
They were at the gate, with Teal'c dialing home. It would not be long before any Jaffa who had been away from the camp arrived here, it was the only way off planet now, after all. They could not afford to hold a debate on the intelligence of taking three unknowns' with hugely superior weapons into the heart of the most secret military installation on Earth. But they O'Neil had to decide they were not a danger in their own right, or he would just smash the dial up device and strand them here himself.
"We were sent from three different alternate realities to save this one, through a quantum mirror in an abandoned building near here." AgentFaith said, as she handed her rifle to the Colonel. The other women had already disarmed themselves, it was the obvious way to win trust here, after all. "You have our weapons, I will give you my pack, but we need to get to Sunnydale, California, and we have to be there SOON. We are helping because that is what we do, and we will supply the weapons tech because we need your co-operation."
The great ring came alive and the blue water effect was by now a comforting routine. They stepped through, and three Faiths finished the off planet part of their Journey.
"I can't wait to see if this realities Faith can do that thing with the feather duster that you do Harris." AgentFaith commented, as she stepped through the event horizon.
The four Faiths were firing single shots, for the most part, except when the demons got closer, which was far too often. It was dark here, in the forest in the rain, which was sheeting down, making it too dark for a normal person to see. Unless they had NVG gear, and the Night Vision Goggles in use were the latest military issue, fortunately for the rest of the gang.
The assault on the sacrifice area was coming in from the north, a steady, walking attack through thick brush that gave far too much cover to the demons defending the ceremony. Giles, Willow, Tara, and Dawn, and Sally were here, to provide magical cover fire, in the case of Willow and Tara, and close in axe and sword work, from Xander, Sally and Giles. The Faiths were grouped together to avoid confusion, since they never had a problem telling who was who, and everyone else did.
Also, the three AltFaith's had experience with the Pulse Guns. No one wanted an amateur handling those.
"Incoming." Slayer Ryan said, and the arrows hit the group, Giles being pierced in the leg. These demons were a lot smarter than any others were; or rather more willing to use weapons beyond just swords. And that was what the ceremony was about, to bring the rest of the demonic and vampire world into the 21st century. There was a mystical reason the thing that went bump in the night didn't use guns, and the spell would change that. This group had made it into the 12th century, which was bad enough.
Once all demons were using modern light infantry weapons - the MP5 was apparently what the High Priest had in mind, he owned stock in the company - they planned to open the hellmouth. Or at least that was the plan while they were still relatively stupid and trapped in prehistoric thinking. What they would do with IQ's above room temperature was anyone's guess.
The return fire from the Faith's cut down the archer's the advance continued, into the area worked over by the earlier air strikes. There had been several Mayor size demons in the original guard force, the high priest Levoy not being a believer in subtlety. They had been hunted down and killed by laser guided 500lb bombs, in a series of attacks that had worked over the site, leaving just the demons that were in caves at the time to defend things. And there were enough of them.
Normally an operation like this would require a battalion scale infantry assault, but the weapons did not exist for that to be anything other than an attempt to kill the demons by over feeding them. Also there was the little detail that Slayer Ryan, and Xander, had brought up.
"Well, guys, I have to point out what the backup plan is." Xander had said, a few days ago, with Sally standing next to him. He was being straightforward about it, but also was in the most defensible position in Magic Box. "The effect will move out very slowly, and be centered on the hellmouth, even though the ceremony is not going to happen there. DARPA research proves that it, and any other hellmouth effect can be stopped utterly, and will be if we fail."
The rest looked at the pair of spooks with a confused look.
"Why not just do it now and save the risk of the fight?" Dawn said. Sally gripped Xander's shoulder hard, before responding.
"Because destroying the hellmouth involves the underground detonation of at least ten 5 megaton thermonuclear devices. The energy right on the hellmouth will cause a backwash down the opening, collapsing the conduit to hell that the mouth is just one end of."
"50 megatons?" Giles said in disbelief. He was not particularly conversant with modern weapons, but he knew the basics. "Fifty million tons of TNT equivalent, detonated underground. My god, that would devastate the state."
"Actually side effects include opening the fault under Sunnydale wide enough to let red hot magma through and turn the town into the Caldera of a new volcano, centered on the hellmouth. The fallout would follow the prevailing upper atmospheric winds to the North East, settling out over a couple of weeks and killing everyone and everything between here and central Canada. And a minor nuclear winter would reduce harvests world wide, killing another 500 to 1000 million people through starvation."
The stunned silence that followed was broken by the sound of Giles getting out the bottle of Scotch he kept behind the counter and drinking about a third of it direct from the bottle in one swallow.
"Would the president ever authorize this, I mean, my god Xander, how can you contemplate it?" Willow asked. What had happened to the goofy boy she had grown up with?
"Already done, the bombs were installed as part of the rebuilding of the high school, in a sealed, deep underground concrete and steel chamber." The former Zeppo said. "The alternative is all 6 Billion of us die, we can't contemplate NOT doing it if necessary."
"And there is a British ballistic missile submarine with special earth penetrating warheads also assigned, in case that doesn't work or isn't enough." Sally added. "It was understood that if the hellmouth ever opened the whole human race was doomed unless it was closed quickly so the local commander has authorization for the underground weapons."
The local commander, for the moment, being Xander himself. He was trusted to do it if necessary, and not do it out of panic. Killing Jessie and Buffy, in particular, had earned him that.
"And the sub?" Tara asked, in a very small voice.
"I have personal launch authority." The slayer added. It was not, after all, an increase in the responsibility she would have carried anyway. The slayer carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, having the ability to end the worst the demon world could do was actually a comfort. "Though, of course, it can be done by others, it's just that the slayer is the first one who would know it was necessary, if she survives the opening itself."
With these happy thoughts in mind the advance continued towards the ceremony area, now only 500 yards away. Giles had to be left behind, alone, there was no one who could be spared to guard him. Xander had an M4 carbine with armor piercing incendiary ammo and a double bladed axe as back up. He was chewing up ammunition at a fierce rate.
Principally he was protecting Willow and Tara, and his flack vest, like the others had been struck repeatedly. He wondered how much use it still was, since it was, of course, damaged each time it absorbed an attack. There was demon blood splashed liberally over him, as it was over all of them. Plus some brains and other organs, from one hit by pulse guns, who tended to explode rather than just lie down and die quietly.
Sally Ryan was totally focused on the killing. Her mission here was clear, and she would not allow anything to distract her from it. The thought of her nights with the Faith's, and the way AgentFaith kept referring to her as Shadow, and about meeting her Alternate while having dinner at the White House, were in a corner of her mind not in use at the moment. She swung her broadsword at the demon in front of her, taking its arm of and spraying herself with its green blood. Then she took its head off, and moved on.
The ceremonial ground
The area was so littered with bits and pieces of Demon that it was hard to walk, getting Giles patched up enough to take part, and moving him into position was even harder. The gutted remains of the full size mayor type demons were, in particular, a serious impediment to movement. Willow and Tara formed the five slayers into the ceremonial circle, that being the ultimate reason they were here. It was prophesied that they and they alone could permanently close the hellmouth, and seal off this reality from other dimensional demons. Which is where an uncomfortable number of them came from, after all.
The ceremony's description included what at first was a hard to translate piece about 'The five must come together, as a couple would'. Given the need to translate it from a rather misspelled Latin copy of an original that was apparently in Syriac, they had encountered a series of translator errors. It was finally decided, however, that it was not a reference to the five merging into two people.
It meant come together as a married couple i.e., have group sex. DeputyFaith had the same response as the rest to this news.
"We can seal the hellmouth by having a really good orgy over it? Jeeves, this is a seriously fun prophecy here." It was not the whole ceremony, far from it, but it was the crucial part, included because to keep within the 'balance' guidelines a loophole had to be available, the PTB would not stand for a totally hopeless situation. But it was felt to be impossible to actually arrange, so the First Evil had thought it up and inserted the clause.
Like the large double-ended dildo that AgentFaith was inserting into Sally Ryan. She would never get the chance to fuck the Presidents daughter in her reality, and intended to make the most of it while lying outrageously to the man himself when asked about all this. She wondered if Shadow, the Secret Service designation for Sally Ryan in her reality, was anything like as inventive a lover as this one. Probably not.
Shadow's biggest responsibility was not making any public relations mistakes that would harm her father's presidency. Slayer Ryan took the need to relax and enjoy life as seriously as she did most other things, convinced that a slayer's connections to the world through friends and lovers was crucial to her life expectancy. She fought hard and played hard, and the fact that she was legally under age in this country meant nothing at all to her.
"I'm not old enough to join the army either." She had said, swinging a large boarding axe for emphasis.
Currently she was pumping on her end of the dildo, with AgentFaith at the other. They were lying on their sides, so as to join the other Faiths in a sort of daisy chain, each girl having sex with two others, mostly mouth to cunt, with Sally kissing the final Faith, DeputyFaith, who was being eaten by the Faith from this reality. Who was getting it from another and so on. Willow, Xander, Giles, and Tara chanted in the background, a rising crescendo as the slayers reached towards orgasm.
The forest suddenly got very loud as they achieved it. The ceremony was over. The world was saved. With the prophecy-mandated part of the proceedings over, the real fun could commence, but they had to evacuate Giles to hospital, and, really, Sally's large apartment was so much more convenient. Jack Ryan had been a self-made millionaire, and his little girl was not short on material comforts.
"I worry so much about Xander." Willow said to Tara, as they were choppered out, leaning over and speaking directly into her ear to be heard without being overheard by the others.
"You think his willingness to kill all those people indicates he is too close to the dark side?" The red heads girlfriend responded, in the same privacy mode.
"No, I think the slayers will fuck him to death." The younger Wicca responded in all seriousness.
The MacLay girl pondered this for a moment.
"Then we will just have to be there and take some of the strain off him, wont we." She returned, sounding perfectly logical as she did so.
"You mean the terrible strain of giving Five slayers enough orgasms to satisfy them. It sounds like a terrible responsibility, but someone has to do it, I suppose." They had been monogamous through their time together, but they had discussed all sorts of fantasies. Plus watching the slayers had made them horny as hell.
"Captain, logic dictates that our responsibilities to the slayers must be our overriding concern." Tara replied, having taken a serious liking to Spock and Tuvok during the many Star Trek marathons that had occurred since Xander's return.
"Live long, and prosper." Willow said, making the Vulcan salute as she did so. It had become her way of agreeing with the once over shy woman she loved. Now she just had to get the Faith's permission.
Somehow she did not think it would take very much persuading to get it.