The Initiative, Part 3.

When we got to Giles' place it was clear that the Watcher had been busy. There was a slew of humans and a couple of near equivalents and Erynne and me.

It turned out to that we were to be in two teams. Team One was the Slayer, the Wicca, Giles and a guy who kept thinking about his cool new pendant..

We were in Team Two, with Destiny Thompson, the vamp and that idiot Watcher, Wesley - I'd nearly watched him burn once already.

It was an interesting line-up, all right. Giles showed us some weapons for the Teams, but Erynne and me had mostly brought our own - I ran a final check on hers right before we went in and split the groups. Erynne and me were kind of joking around, partly to kind of relax into it.

The Inititative Part 4

Team One was going right into the Lowell House complex, led by Cianna Hayes - she's an Initiative Member, knows the place and could get them in. Her vibes were ... kinda interesting...

Team Two stayed above, but once we we reached Lowell House I was using the mojo to locate people in the complex - including Team One. So I was "listening hard" mentally. That meant that the Wesley-Watcher's fear was blasting at me. It was ready to turn to anger at any moment, too - and then, well, if he combusted it wasn't going to make me popular, though there wouldn't have been many traces to tell unfriendlies what happened.

That guy is mostly hostility. Ok, I do know that "What is your name?" isn't a necessarily a rude question, here - but "How long do your kind expect to live?" and "What kind of thing kills your species?" has gotta be fighting words in most places. I don't take kindly to questions about Erynne and me, either - or to questions at all.

We were all trying to shut the guy up. It was late night, deadly quiet, voices carry - that meant trying to focus the mojo to know where they were without making them sing. Nikki Wood was already singing that song about beer that's so popular with prisoners - it says bored to tears without changing a word.

It was just as well, because the army guys had moved her since Cianna Hayes was last in there. My mojo let the Teams use cell phones to home in on Nikki, especially when she was singing. There was an elevator near her cell and a ventilation shaft right outside it. It could have been an easy ride - but then the trouble started and I figure we had Wesley's chuntering to blame for it.

The Inititative Part 5

Erynne and me were kind of joking around while we checked her weapons, but we kept our voices well down. We'd stopped by the time I heard the soldiers coming, anyway.

If the army jumped us because they heard us it had to be that idiot Wesley's fault. There were four of the soldiers, armed with guns and tasers. I smoked out to get behind them as soon as I heard them. When I started with the sing-and-burn mojo it distracted them enough to let Erynne take out at least one neat and fast.

I was watching Erynne, and didn't quite see how Destiny got the second, but she dropped him. The Vamp punched the third through a rack of stuff, but then put both fists to his own head, yelping - not what I'd expected - then he took a couple of staggering steps toward the elevator to the depths, shouting,

"Fix me! Take it out!" The fourth soldier almost got past me while I was watching Spike. I got my mind back on business just as one of the girls put a cross-bow bolt through GI Joe's lower leg.

We were in trouble, there were more of them - downstairs, but the Sergeant was heading for an internal phone. He was thinking "pincer movement" - meant that if he reached it and called backup there'd be no retreat for Team One and soldiers on both sides of Team Two.

Erynne can't teleport. She'd started to get Worthless Wesley out of there - he almost needed dragging. We could hear the voices of Team One in the ventilation shaft from Nikki's cage. Destiny started to feed a rope down to them and Spike moved over to help her get them out.

The mojo was telling me that the soldiers knew where Team One were - that meant they knew where they'd come out. They'd be setting up an ambush around us in minutes if the Sergeant reached a phone.

I signalled Erynne to keep going out of there , and then smoked down to the lower level to try to give the Sergeant a real hot solo number.