FIC: All Change At Halloween (10/?)
FIC All Change At Halloween (10/?)
“Whoa,” Faith stared down at Earth, Xander’s arm wrapped around her shoulders as they sat on the moon, supping sodas as they peered down at their home planet. “Looks pretty from here.”
“Yeah,” Xander replied, her boy-friend having created an air bubble for them to sit inside so they could talk to one another.
“We got protect all that.” Faith took a swig of her coke before continuing. “Kinda, scary, right?”
“Scary, exciting.” Xander shrugged. “It’s both I guess. But at least with our powers, we can help people.”
“Yeah,” Faith agreed before glancing at her watch. “Forty minutes to patrol, we had better head back.”
Xander grinned at her. “Next time I’ll bring a picnic.”
* * *
Wood strode into the underground bunker on the site of their partially-built compound to find Joy sat in front of a bank of screens, their number so many that only someone with Joy’s unique abilities could keep a track of them all. The multiple screens ran feeds from Joy’s hacks into the town’s extensive CCTV system as well as the roads in and out of town and the major transportation hubs, allowing their group to be at the scene of any vampire or demon attack in seconds.
Not that there had been many attacks in the past few weeks. Wood grimaced inwardly. According to the records he’d been able to find, Sunnydale normally had demonic activity somewhere in the region of three to five times that of major cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston, yet in the month since ‘Day Of Light’ and the destruction of the Orpheus den, the incidence of activity had dropped to half that of the major cities.
That was a good thing, but if it continued, they’d have to consider moving out, spreading their numbers out throughout America and maybe the world, otherwise they wouldn’t be fully utilising their abilities. Wood’s brow furrowed. He couldn’t help but wonder what the others would think about that idea, but the fact was there were too many of them to justify protecting just one town, even one as important as Sunnydale.
Dismissing those thoughts as for another time, Wood looked down towards Joy. “Anything?”
“No,” the Oriental cheerleader replied with a shake of the head then paused. “Well, there was an alarm going off at Sunnydale City Bank, but it only rang twice then stopped.”
“Wait,” Wood’s eyes narrowed. “Are any of the patrols in the area?”
“Yeah,” Joy nodded. “Giles’.”
“Send him over there, just to check it out.”
* * *
“Ah,” Giles listened to Joy’s message over his earpiece, tricky technology that, but if it made them all just a little safer then so be it, “thank you for the message, Joy. Tell Robin we’re on our way.”
Giles looked over his shoulder to the others in his patrol group, chest tightening. He never felt frightened, well he never felt fear for himself, he just wasn’t built that way, but before going into any potential action, he always felt a cold, barely controlled terror at the thought of anything happening to those who looked to him for leadership.
Of course the likelihood of injury had diminished considerably since their mass possessions, but nevertheless….
“What was the call, G?”
Giles focused his attention on Faith, the oldest of the Slayers, leaning against Xander, the young man’s arm wrapped possessively around her trim waist. Behind them stood Gunn and Cordelia. “Joy’s picked up an unexplained discrepancy from the Sunnydale City Bank’s security system. Robin’s requested we look into it.”
“A bank robbery?” Xander’s brow furrowed. “Is that really our territory?”
Giles shrugged. “How many robberies do you think there are in Sunnydale?” Giles paused before pressing his point. “At night? Sunnydale has an uncommonly low crime rate, so the chance of a bank robbery having human perpetrators is low. And if such miscreants do manage to steal funds-.”
“They can use ‘em to buy weapons, humans for sacrifices, that sorta thing,” Faith’s full lips thinned into a scowl.
“Precisely.” Giles paused for a heartbeat. “Shall we?”
* * *
“Okay,” Tor crouched by the side of the vault that the skills he’d picked up from his possession as Paladin had allowed him to break into, his friends busy emptying the vault’s deposit boxes into their bags. Ever since Halloween, he and his friends had all been different, changed into the costumes they’d worn, but until now they’d been unsure just how to use their new-found skills, Heidi having changed to Lady Shiva, Kyle into Tombstone, and Rhonda into Colleen Wing. “We better get outta here, we’re cutting things too fine-.”
“Correction,” a husky, very familiar voice drawled from behind him. “You’re way outta time.”
Tor spun around and forced a smile as he saw Faith stood beside his fellow former Hyena possession victim, Xander Harris. How did a goof like Harris get a fine piece of tail like her anyway? “Hey Lehane, always nice to see a honey like you, how did you get in here?”
“We followed you in through the back.” Tor’s heart skipped a beat when the school librarian walked into view behind Faith and Xander, the Englishman flanked by Gunn and Chase. “Nice job on the alarms, although not quite good enough.”
Tor relaxed slightly as his friends moved into position behind him. “You need to back the fuck outta here.”
The Englishman smirked. “Oh I hardly think so.”
Tor grinned. “Your funeral.” He lunged forward, fist shooting out in a straight right. His jaw clenched when Xander leaned away from his blow to drive a fist up into his stomach. “Uhhh!” Tor groaned, vision blurring as his ribs cracked under the punch’s impact, its velocity lifting from his feet and flinging him into the vault’s far wall, head bouncing off the unyielding steel wall, lights erupting before his eyes as he slid to the tiled floor.
* * *
Faith swayed to the side as Heidi charged in, dropping to one knee beneath her front thrust kick, her palm powering up to crash into the knee of the other girl’s grounded leg. “Ahhhh!” Her fellow Sunnydale High student threw her head back in a scream as her leg imploded inwards, bone shattering as she toppled to the ground, face contorted in a pained grimace.
Faith looked around to see her companions had already taken care of the rest of the wanna-be thieves, whatever skills they might have acquired making them no match for her group’s combined power. “What we gonna do with them?”
“Huh,” Giles pursed his lips together before replying. “I’d suggest they were enhanced physically marginally at best given how easily you dealt with them-.”
“Maybe we’re just that damn good?” Gunn suggested.
“Let no one ever accuse you of modesty, Charles. False or otherwise.” Giles chuckled and shook his head. “No, they were rather easy for you to defeat, I’d suspect any enhancements they did get were as regards skills or minimal physical improvements at best. If we secure them, then lock them in the vault, the authorities should be able to deal with them in the morning.”
* * *
Gunn stuffed his hands in his pockets as he walked through the darkened graveyard after dropping Cordy just outside the gated community her and the rest of Sunnydale’s upper-class lived. Just a few months ago he wouldn’t have been able to walk through Sunnydale at night, not without taking a massive risk, the powers he’d gotten had certainly changed things.
Of course not all for the better. Gunn’s brow furrowed. Both he and his sister being put on salary by their new Council had its advantages, namely they could help their mom with the bills, make life a little easier. Of course their mom was startin’ to ask questions, questions that couldn’t be easily answered.
But, Gunn paused, brow furrowing and jaw clenching, perhaps his mother should be told. After all, she lived in Sunnydale, and was as just in danger as anyone else in this mad city.
“Huh.” Gunn glanced to his left when a hulking shadow seemed to shift in the darkness. Fists clenched, he started towards the mystery being. “Brother, have you picked the wrong guy to stalk-, shit!” Gunn reared back, shock filling him when the shadow lurched out of the darkness.
The creature was an easy foot taller than him and a couple of hundred pounds heavier, with grasping mandibles set in its jaw and long braids dangling from its skull. Time slowed for Gunn as he recognised the monster as from one of the most famous sci-fi movies of his youth.
Instinct took over as the creature swung up a futuristic-looking gun, Gunn’s hand snapping out to grab the wrist of the alien’s gunarm, halting the weapon’s ascent. The alien let out a surprised grunt then jammed a left hook hard into the side of Gunn’s head.
“That the best ya got?” Gunn flashed the creature a shit-eatin’ grin as he swung a foot up and at the creature’s crotch. The alien twisted at the waist, planting its thigh in the way of his attack.
“Ahhh!” Gunn fell back, his eyes watering when his adversary raked his fingers down Gunn’s eyes. Realising he’d released his hold on the alien’s gunarm, Gunn threw himself backwards and over a gravestone.
“Shit!” He cursed as the gravestone exploded, rubble falling on him. Luke Cage might be impervious to bullets and knives, but Gunn was far from sure how he’d deal with a laser beam at close range.
Snatching up a fist-sized rock, he flung it at the alien, bouncing it off the creature’s head. Gunn made his feet the moment the rock connected, snapping the alien’s head back, and lunged at the hulking alien. His shoulder crashed into the creature’s chest, the alien spinning and flinging him off and into the trunk of a nearby oak.
The tree shuddered with the impact as Gunn crashed to the ground, rolling away from a laser blast and towards the alien, leg swinging out to kick the monster in its ankles. The alien let out an inhuman howl as it stumbled backwards, Gunn leaping to his feet in time to crash an unrestrained uppercut into the monster’s jaw. Green blood flew from the creature’s mouth, drenching him as he twisted away from a retaliatory left cross while slicing a karate chop down and into the wrist of the creature’s gunarm, the alien’s gun falling to the ground. The monster snarled then leapt at him, the two of them crashing together like a pair of rams, Gunn drove his head forward and into the creature’s face, the alien stumbling backwards as Gunn snatched hold of either side of the monster’s head and simultaneously pulled and twisted with all his might.
The creature’s head tore off its shoulders, legs folding like a puppet’s whose strings had been snipped. “Damn,” Gunn staggered momentarily, his heart pounding and blood roaring through his ears, “that was fun.” Gunn stared down at the decapitated alien and shook his head. “A Predator here, unbelievable.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his cell and quickly dialled a number, speaking the moment the phone was answered. “Giles, we gotta a problem.”
* * *
Wood grimaced as he pulled off his blood-soaked surgical gloves and stared down at the corpse he’d just autopsied. This was bad, very bad. Shaking his head, he threw his discarded gloves into the bin before hurrying out into the office beyond where Giles, Wesley, Kate Lockley, and the Doyles sat. “As far as I can tell it’s completely alien DNA. It was never human,” he reported.
“So it’s another victim of whatever happened at Halloween?” queried Wesley, his eyes ringed through lack of sleep.
“No,” Wood exchanged a look with Giles, “while I was waiting for Gunn to get here, I consulted with Giles, and he agreed. Neither of us saw a costume resembling the alien at the shop.”
“Yes,” Giles added, “while there were a number of generic alien costumes from several science-fiction shows and films, there weren’t any from the Predator film.”
“So what are you saying exactly?” Kate leaned forward in her seat, the former cop’s eyes narrowing. “That more than one shop was affected by the spell?”
“That’s a possibility,” Giles broke in. “However it’s a remote one. The power to permanently affect the costumes of just one shop would take that of a trickster god. The power to permanently affect the costumes of multiple shops would take well, multiple gods.” Giles chuckled and shook his head. “Gods don’t have a reputation of working well with others, least of all trickster gods.”
“Then what?” this came from Harriet Doyle.
“I have a theory,” Wood replied. “The initial spell had an unintended side-effect, a sort of bleed through of other universes into ours.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Wood raised a hand at Wes’ bemused query. “Allow me to explain,” he picked up a plastic cup and poured some water into it. “When an universe’s walls are secure, it holds the universe within secure. Nothing can get in or out, but when it’s pierced,” Wood jammed a pen into the side of the cup over and over until water began dripping out, “things can seep in and out.”
“And what drips out can in theory drip in?” Giles queried.
Doyle groaned as his nod. “I’m really glad I met you fellas,” the Irishman shook his head. “So what can we do ‘bout this mess? Can we seal this universe back up?”
Wood snorted. “I’m a genius, not a god. However, I hope I can find a way of finding a way to warn us before one of these visitors enters our universe, a change in atmospherics perhaps.” Wood paused then continued. “One optimistic theory, I believe that because the spell originated here in Sunnydale, the only passageway into our reality is in this town.”
“Are we at danger of slipping out of this universe or into another?” asked Jenny.
“No,” Wood shook his head. “It’s my contention that while these holes exist, they’re not easily traversable, you’d need an advanced and robust spacecraft to get through them, or at least considerable magical skill, you couldn’t accidentally fall through.”
“Well that’s something,” Wesley’s brow furrowed. “However, I have to admit to some confusion. The Predator is a fictional construct, correct?”
Wood rubbed at his head. “Infinite alternate realities etc, perhaps it comes from an universe where they legitimately exist. There’s also a theory that writers, creators etc., think of their ideas through some sort of osmosis, the other existing universes sort of seeping into their imagination.”
“Are you sayin’ we could be invaded by the bloody Imperial fleet or the Dalek empire?” Doyle queried.
Wood swallowed, he hadn’t even considered that possibility, then slowly nodded. “Essentially yes.”
* * *
“Yes,” Travers’ brow furrowed as he finished reading the proposal and looked up, “your idea has some merit. How long do you think it would take to train the men to use the materials in question?”
“Three to four months.”
“Huh.” Travers leaned back in his seat, gaze sweeping around his wood-pannelled office, eyes settling on the family crest hung above the door. He was the first Travers to sit in this august seat in seven generations. Ever since the Sunnydale upstarts had slaughtered the world’s premier vampires in a solitary violent night, the Council had been diminished in the wider demon community’s eyes.
That couldn’t be allowed to stand, not on his watch.
“Very well,” he nodded at the more or less patiently . “I’ll authorise funding and your access to the Prohibited Weapons Wing. I’ll want weekly reports of your progress, Ms. Post.”
The business-suited, severe-featured woman stood to attention at the far side of his desk nodded tartly. “Of course, sir.”