Chapter 2:  What the...?

The next thirty seconds of Buffy’s life went about as expected. Then everything went right, straight to Hell.

Craving the element of surprise, she stalked in the direction of the Pantheon at a languid pace, doing her best impression of a tourist who was lost and a little drunk. She saw the shape stiffen in the amber glow for a few tense seconds, then break into a sudden, beefy run.  Arms pumping like an Olympian, lungs steaming out breaths, the Slayer sprinted after it.

By the time she reached the temple's open maw, every molecule of her body was blazing hot and thirsty for battle.  The place was as quiet as any old tomb.  From the look of things, the place was undergoing major renovations. Plastic tarps draped like sailcloth from the steel masts of fresh scaffolding, offering a few too many hiding places for Buffy's comfort.  Her prey had already ducked out of sight, so she slowed her pace, cautiously snooping behind each billowing sheet and stone column that she passed, every muscle a cocked and loaded pistol.

The sky fell.

In this case, the sky was a great big belly-flopping demon. He landed nicely, and too fast for her to roll free.  She felt a rib crack under the monster’s bulk and heard herself let out a sharp scream.

Swiveling sideways, he went for her head.  A huge gray fist slammed down, atomizing stone as she rolled again, better this time, and then sprung to her feet.

“Fun!" she said.  "No boring chit-chat. I like your style, buddy.”

The monster was only a bit taller than your average steroidal  pro-wrestler, but looked to be almost twice as wide.  His face was the usual muddle of gross demon bits, with a pair of large pale eyes that seemed to sweat spoiled milk.  The breed wasn’t recognizable to her, but they rarely were. Seen one demon, seen ‘em all, that was her motto.  He wore nothing except a hard leather cuirass trimmed by some sort of pleated kilt.

“Cute skirt. Too bad it’s not my size…”

He charged mid-quip, pumping his sinewy legs like a star linebacker.  She spun gracefully out of reach, snapping a kick at an exposed spanse of throat, but the freak was deceptively lithe.  Stopping on a dime, he blocked and counter-attacked with a single, agile movement that sent her flying.

Arthritis , here I come.  She gave her opponent a second, slower look, eyes probing for a weakness.  The head was a craggy bone about the size of a basketball, with a wide jaw full of what looked like sixty or so razor sharp teeth.

Ouch, she thought. ‘Kay, so, not too keen on the face punching-ness...

Her eye wandered south.  The leather cuirass didn’t look like it protected much, except maybe the monster’s pride after a big turkey dinner.  Plus, the armholes had the cutest little dimples, one of which exposed a pale and quivering patch of armpit.  She had a pleasant thought about poking something pointy into it.

When he charged again, Buffy fired off a volley of rapid strikes, attempting to steer him towards a lattice of iron railings guarding a damaged segment of a wall.  The demon wasn’t having it, though.  In an astonishing display of chop-socky, he matched her blow for blow, his limbs an ugly gray blur of motion. She backed out of range, feeling a sudden spooky vibe about the fight.  The monster's moves didn’t feel like some sort of demon-y fighting intuition. The big galoot was going all textbook on her, as if it had been trained to fight.

Or, more specifically, as if it had been trained to fight her.

Suddenly, it flew forward, pinwheeling gracefully as a treelike leg slammed into her side. A dark thought struck her, then, as she curled into a defensive crouch.

Those are Slayer moves.

What the…?

It kept coming, massive arms firing like pistons.  The Slayer strained to deflect them, but he was too fast, and she heard the cracked rib explode as he dug a sharp elbow into her midsection. It was a dizzying sensation and, staggering backwards, Buffy thought she could taste her own blood. Things we’re going downhill fast, and she had yet to land a single punch.

Then, everything got several thousand times worse.

Buffy saw the girl too late, whirling ghostlike out of the shadows at the corner of her vision. She looked to be about sixteen years old, with spiky, cropped hair the color of fresh azaleas. Her eyes peered raccoon-like out of a dark bruise of mascara as she circled. She seemed human enough, but somehow Buffy didn’t have to ask whose side she was on; the leering young face betrayed her intentions with a sinister clarity.

She wanted a shot at the Big Time. Tall, Gray and Gruesome had just been the bait.

Okay. Weapon. Now-ish.

Guarding her flank against Lil’ Miss Punk Rock, Buffy slid sideways and crushed an iron gate with a brutal side kick.  The posts rattled out like like teeth from a jaw.  She popped a slender steel railing into her hands,  braced for impact. The beast obliged with a leaping assault, his arms spread like the wings of some great, primordial bird.

She had to time it perfectly. She did.

Feigning toward the head, she twisted at the last possible moment, planting the tip under the soft arch of his shoulderblade. The monster roared, but kept coming, grabbing at her with its huge paws.

Damn. Not deep enough, she mused.  

She was wrestling forward, trying to jam her makeshift spear home, when she felt the abrupt, stiffening agony of a boot chomping into her spine. The shock faded quickly, but it gave the monster more than enough time to slip behind her and lock in its death grip.

The strange girl arced languidly back into view. She was still smiling. It was a familiar look to Buffy’s eyes – a certain dazed, perpetual half-giggle that seemed to be the exclusive property of the young and the insane. A gleaming katana was sliding up from a scabbard that hung down loosely from the girl’s scrawny back.

Buffy struggled frantically, but the demon simply screwed tight its viselike grip. There was something frighteningly painless about it all. The monster did not jerk or growl or thrash her from side to side. Rather, he made subtle, almost tender adjustments to her writhing form, keeping the pressure to a slow, even crescendo as he murdered her. She felt her windpipe gently bend and squeeze shut, felt the strength drain out of her like cool sand.

Is it over? she wondered, cursing the dull sense of relief the notion brought on. Her mouth was dry. She could feel her heart throbbing in it.

Can we rest now?

As if to answer, the girl closed her small hands around her weapon, the fingers drumming sensuously along the silken hilt. Her lips parted, but she said nothing as she cranked the blade up over her head, the torchlight dancing in her crazed brown eyes like a pair of supernovas.

What happened next was a little...

Fuzzy.

She saw a big black...

Spider?

It crawled sideways down the wall behind her executioner. She heard something like a garbage disposal roaring. There was a short, piercing scream. Things went.

Dark.

And then she was falling.  And then she was dead.

No, she mused.  Not dead.  Her face bounced off cold stone, cheekbone cracking like a clamshell.  The oxygen surged back into her lungs at hurricane speeds, and before she knew what she was doing she was moving, arms and legs scraping for purchase on the marble floor.  Through a blur of tears she could see the spider again.

No, a man.

Or, at least, man-shaped. It was clad head to toe in black, and it didn’t seem to have a face.

Concentrate, dammit...

She gulped another blast of air and rose stubbornly to her feet, blinking at the peculiar scene unfolding before her. The stranger’s body looked like some sort of leathery, space-age biker suit, complete with matching gloves and a pair of butt-stompin’ knee-high combat boots. The head was a black metal ellipse that dovetailed neatly with the strange, studded armor plating around its neck and shoulders. Instead of a face, there was only a bulge of dark glass, like a TV screen turned off.

Getting to be a real party in here, she thought. But who invited you?

The fight was ferocious. The dark newbie moved with inhuman speed, lacing its adversaries with moves that were practiced and precise, but not at all textbook… at least not out of any textbook Buffy Summers had ever written. Limbs shot in all directions, a blur of inky violence that rained down blows faster then she could count them. The girl suddenly looked like she was in serious trouble, overmatched and overwhelmed. Her shrill voice started ringing out commands to her monster in between ragged, panicked breaths.

Oh, sure. Now she talks! Steeling herself for round two, Buffy took a wary step forward, searching for an opening into the brawl.

She took a second step. Then it was all over.

The girl had lashed out wildly with the sword, misjudging her foe’s position by a quarter inch or so. Carpe-ing the Diem, Captain Faceless yanked her sword arm past it's target, savagely rolling the blade’s momentum up through the skull of the grey demon/Slayer thingee who was sneaking up from behind. She barely had time to yelp before her opponent ripped the sword free, then neatly trimmed off her obnoxious little head.

Buffy froze. With the fight over, the adrenaline plummeted out of her veins. She felt the broken rib bite a bruised muscle and fought back the sudden urge to vomit. Limping towards the strange apparition, she summoned whatever strength she had left before she spoke.

“Okay,” she said. “I give up. Exactly what the fuck are you supposed to be?”

The creature stiffened at the sound of her voice. She watched it turn slowly towards her. The mirrored dome of its face seemed to gape at her in amazement.

“Um, sorry. Maybe you don’t speak-o da English-o,” she hissed. “Il vostro nome? Che cosa?”

When she said this, the creature went limp, looking for all the world like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. Her eyes roved over its sleek form.  She decided that it looked like something off the pages of Xander’s beloved old comic books. What she had initially mistaken for the silky-smooth surface of a bodysuit was actually a corrugated industrial landscape in miniature – a taut mesh of sinewed cable and beaded glass that seemed to pulse to the rhythm of a mechanized heartbeat.

Cautiously, she limped within range of the dead girl’s head.  Resisted a dark impulse to kick it.

“Look... I don’t know what you are...”  She wove a careful path between the corpses as she spoke, measuring each step down to the centimeter. “Don’t really care.  But since you just splattered everyone else around here, I think you owe me some factoids. Like, pronto.”

She was only a few feet away. A scent of rubber and burning ash filled her nostrils. The robot appeared to sense her revulsion, recoiling from it like a rusted spring. She reached out her hand.

“Hey. Listen…"

It sprang backwards, then wordlessly hop-scotched up a sheaf of scaffolding like some kind of giant squirrel.  A moment later was gone, sliding up and out through a sharp crack of night in the temple roof. The Slayer was in no shape to follow.

Buffy calmly surveyed the carnage. The demon’s head had basically exploded down the middle, the ruined remnants hanging in shreds around its limp maw. The girl was in better shape. Well, each piece of her was, anyway. She studied the face briefly, but it wasn’t ringing any bells. Her clothes were a Goth-punk hodgepodge, fishnets and leather sprinkled with a just a dash of Hello Kitty crap-itude. The sword appeared to be her only weapon, but she did have a small combat pouch strapped to the shoulder rig. Inside, Buffy found only a lavender iPod, one small Italian phrasebook, and a crumpled wad of cash. No Passport, no travelers’ checks. Nothing identifiable.

She stuffed the items in her coat pockets and left, shuffling gingerly down a maze of darkened streets before finally hailing a taxi. There was no sign of the black Whatever-It-Was.

Yeah, great job, buddy, she thought ruefully. Got a couple of Slayer assassins looking to carve me a new one, and you come along and waste them both before I can find out why?

The thought chilled her as she fingered the bruise at the base of her spine. The girl had a leg like a cannon. There was no question she was one of the Chosen. Which meant Giles kept tabs on her. Which meant…

What, exactly?

In a way, the demon disturbed her even more. She ran the fight again in her head, watching each punch play out in super slow-mo. She recalled the early days of her training with Giles, remembered the endless repetitions, honing each clockwork combination down to a hair trigger. The monster had it all down pat. He’d been studying the Art; probably not for long, but seriously - even passionately. Someone had taught him well.

Which means… what, exactly?

She cursed her rescuer again under her breath. If only she had a little time with one of them; time to break them, grind out truth. Now, she was just swimming blindly, a big blonde fish in a very small, very delicate barrel. Did her new buddy think they wouldn’t come for her again?

Rome. City of secrets. Empire of lies.

Thanks a lot robo-boy. Thanks, but no thanks. She gazed thoughtfully into the streaking night sky.

But, thanks.

***

Home was safe enough, for now. The lush green pan of upper Lazio was not an inviting battleground for a sneak attack. She could spot them coming for miles. Or, at least, that’s what she told herself.

The Slayer nursed her wounds with a soft dollop of chocolate ice cream. She’d never gotten used to calling it gelato, and probably never would. On the nightstand, her laptop dozed serenely, its screensaver a dream of 3D fish.  She gazed again at the mission brief spread across her lap, blinking to prevent the dreary municipal print from etching itself onto her retina. She wanted to sleep too. She wouldn’t.

His mark was there, the lacy Oxford signature unmistakable on her death warrant. Beside it was his seal, supposedly his family crest: a red falcon clutching the center of a spear. There was only one mold. The man kept it in his left breast pocket. She gulped down another spoonful. On the far end of the bed, her old warchest stood open like a soldier snapped to attention, the arsenal inside gaping longingly at her.

She picked up the phone and dialed. It only rang once.

“Buffy,” creaked the old familiar voice. “I didn’t know you had this number.”

“Hi, G.” Her jaw was clenched like a fist. She almost had to spit the words. “We need to talk.”

“Yes, well... I suppose I have a few moments to...”

“In person.”

There was a pause. “Are you alright?” He sounded distracted, but somehow still irritatingly cool. She waited. “Well, things are a bit of a mess right now, I’m sure you’ve heard. If you come Thursday we could…”

”I’m not going anywhere,” she snarled, the demon inside her straining at its leash. “You’re coming to see me. Alone.”

Silence again. Then, “I’ll book a flight tomorrow morning. I’ll call you from the airport, let you know the schedule.” 

The demon tore at her lungs, clawing towards daylight as it chanted her prehistoric song of blood.  “I’ll be waiting.”

She pressed END, put the phone down.

Picked it back up. She had one more call to make.