NT: Chapter 103

It turned out that both Amy and Sheila were out dealing with various issues. Amy was lending her magic to an attempt by the Special Forces to quarantine the town of Canaima near San Francisco, which was currently being overrun by a variety of prehistoric giant spiders that had recently been brought back by a scientific expedition to a remote valley in South America. Meanwhile, Sheila had gone out to Los Angeles to deal with a Cannibalistic Serial Killer, who was leaving signs that he belonged to the Cult of the Old God of Cannibalism, Yog, behind at the scenes of his attacks, at the behest of the Special Forces. Neither was in Sunnydale right now, and both would be back by tomorrow.

As I grabbed a Penn Pavel's Ale from the refrigerator, which none of the various folks who'd been living here while I was in South Town and Japan, Xander finished filling me in on that. I cracked open the bottle as Faith snorted at the retelling of what was going on and took a sip, nodding as I did so.

"You never said shit about your group being all buddy-buddy with the Special Forces. Should I be worried?" Questioned Faith with a grin.

"You're good. The Special Forces don't give a damn about delinquency. If they did, they'd've read me the riot act for underage drinking already." I chuckled.

"Still, I had no clue. My Watcher never said anything about it. Am I gonna haveta deal with the fuzz now too?" Queried Faith, teasingly.

"I doubt it. Though I'm curious about what exactly brought all this on. We were mostly independent of the Special Forces when I left. Something must have changed while I was dealing with the Yamata-No-Orochi with Athena, Nightwolf, and those guys." I mused.

"You don't know the half of it. While you were gone, I got Ambushed by Sonya Blade coming home one evening. She couldn't find you, so she came looking for me, Ames, and Sheila." Scoffed Xander.

"Seems like a bad day if someone that high up in the Special Forces came running to you guys." I huffed.

"This Sonya Blade chick that important, Uly?" Asked Faith.

"Yeah, she's part of Special Forces Headquarters. She's part of their Alpha Unit for Supernatural Operations along with Major Briggs and Colonel Guile. If something big is going down with the things that go bump in the night that they absolutely can't leave to chance, she's one of the Agents they send." I nodded.

"Yeah, well, this was big enough that she reached out to us, though it wasn't exactly supernatural." Opined Xander.

"Explain, Xan." I prompted.

"Yeah, if it ain't supernatural, what else is there? I'm pretty sure the regular cops coulda handled a more normal threat, yeah?" Questioned Faith.

"Have you ever heard of something called a Hydralisk?" Queried Xander.

"No. Should I have?" I asked.

"I mean, I've never heard of anything like it either, but that's cause it's not our usual sort of thing. It's an alien super-predator, not some supernatural monster or anything." Shrugged Xander.

"Wait, Aliens are real?" Questioned Faith.

"A lot of things are real, Faith. You know that, why do you draw the line at aliens?" I queried.

"I'm just sayin'. It seems like some sorta shit outta a movie or something." Huffed Faith.

"Well, the thing is, the Special Forces had been looking into some sort of ancient spaceship that crashed on Earth way back in time that they'd uncovered. Apparently, they went down there with a research team to study it, found some sort of psionic sphere thing on the crashed ship and uncovered a second crashed ship during the whole debacle. Some kind of Space Pirates from way back called the Turanic Raiders. It was that second ship the Hydralisk Egg was on. The Special Forces sent a team over to salvage the Pirate Ship and that wound up causing the Hydralisk Egg to hatch. The thing crawled out of the egg and shredded the Special Forces Team boarding the Pirate Ship before swimming to the west coast." Summarized Xander.

"Damn, X. Just where was this ship supposed to have been anyway?" Asked Faith.

"Halfway between Hawaii and Tahiti, smack in the middle of the Pacific." Answered Xander.

"That's a long swim. You say it made it to the West Coast?" I questioned.

"Yeah. It came ashore nearby, which was why Sonya showed up here to scare the bejesus out of me." Nodded Xander.

"Oh yeah? So what happened, X? We gotta track down an alien thing and kick its ass?" Queried Faith.

"No, we took care of it. It wasn't easy, though. Sheila almost died." Responded Xander.

"But you had the healing potions I left you guys, right? And Amy made more?" I asked.

"Yeah. It was a whole thing, though." Affirmed Xander.

"I like storytime." Mused Faith.

Xander nodded at that and launched into a story about the group hunting the Hydralisk. It was a thing that apparently took half the summer to deal with, largely because of how the Hydralisk was so damn deadly. Apparently, not only could it fire its chitinous spines as some sort of ranged attack, not only could its claws shred tank armor, not only was its carapace tough enough to shrug off a howitzer strike, but it also had apparently evolved some sort of muscular augmentation in the midst of the hunt. Apparently, it had needed to raid some Triarch Industries Facilities to get raw materials for it, but it managed to drag enough back to its den to force the evolution.

In the end, that evolution allowed the Hydralisk to surprise Sheila during an attempt to kill the thing after it had attacked a young couple driving up from LA in a Danver Spectra out in the stretch of desert between Sunnydale and Oxnard. It had apparently moved way faster than the group had expected and managed to slip a claw attack past Sheila's guard that punched through her Chi-Hardened Body and practically impaled her. Only Amy's quick thinking with a Potion of Extra Healing managed to save Sheila's life. Xander managed to keep the damn thing from finishing Sheila off, keeping it occupied at the cost of a grazing hit from one of the Hydralisk's Spines to the shoulder, but Amy returned to the fight once Sheila had been force-fed the potion and began throwing down Fifth Circle Evocations like Cone of Cold and Fire Breath. Between that and Xander's Chi Attacks, tossing out Hadoukens like candy, the Hydralisk was driven off.

Unfortunately, that hadn't stopped the Hydralisk from tearing the Danver Spectra's Steel Body apart and killing the couple that was driving. Once the group had recovered and disposed of the evidence of the attack, after calling it into the Special Forces from a Gas Station Pay Phone a couple miles down the road, they tracked the Hydralisk into the desert, finding its Den hidden in the ruins of an old Spanish Colonial Ranch that looked like it hadn't been occupied since the fifties. They managed to kill the thing by flooding the Ranch House with Magical and Chi-based attacks from outside, causing a massive explosion that not only collapsed the decrepit building and destroyed the Den, but managed to severely wound the Hydralisk and flush it out, where they finished it off.

The whole affair had taken a month and a half to finally deal with and in that time, the Hydralisk had killed twenty-four people, averaging four killings a wekk, mostly from hikers in the desert, but also from Triarch Industries Security Staff during the raid on the warehouse that it undertook to force the evolution that it had used to almost kill Sheila. Apparently, the Special Forces had needed to toss a juicy contract Triarch Industries' Way to make up for the attack, though the news of what it was hadn't leaked to the press yet. Sonya Blade had insinuated to Xander during the debrief that it was for a Military Personal Armor Project, though. Triarch Industries weren't the only ones pissed off, either. Apparently, Mayor Wilkins had strong words for the Sunnydale Press about the 'bungling of the Federal Government's response to the terrorist attack on one of our finest local businesses' that threw suspicion off his own administration.

"Damn, your Mayor sounds like he's the kinda scumbag politician who'd make a career outta a bombing or some shit." Frowned Faith.

"You have no idea." Scowled Xander.

"Mayor Wilkins is a Black Sorcerer and a Warlock. His grandad built Sunnydale and his family has basically owned this town and the Hellmouth, ever since. The thing is, at least from the few times I interacted with him, he tends to want to keep his little Kingdom here intact to Lord Over for the forseeable future." I informed.

"Meanin' what, exactly?" Questioned Faith.

"Meaning he can at least be relied upon to help deal with threats to Sunnydale that don't come from him and his." I answered.

"He's basically a supervillain, but he's our supervillain." Shrugged Xander.

"I dunno what that entails, but I'm still leery of thinking like that too much. With those sorts of Black Sorcerers, they'll do anything if its in pursuit of ultimate power. Sure, he hasn't sacrificed the town in a ritual or anything. Yet. But there's a reason I turned him down when he offered me a job last year." I pointed out.

"Wait, you were offered a City Job and you didn't take it? That's a shitload of cash you pissed away, Uly." Chimed in Faith.

"He doesn't need the money, though I don't remember you telling us the Mayor offered you a job." Intoned Xander.

"Yeah. He wanted me to be Sherrif. I saw through that, though." I nodded.

"What do you mean saw through that?" Queried Xander.

"Xan, what do you think a Sherrif for Sunnydale would be like? The Cops are already in the Mayor's Pocket, but the problem with that is that a Modern Police Department still gets reviewed by national organizations and stuff. A Town Sherrif, though? There's a few places where that kind of thing is still on the books, and they tend to be holdovers from Wild West times that just never got phased out formally. Think about how corrupt town sherrifs tended to be in the Old West. Little Bill Dagget in Big Whiskey, Wyoming, John Herod in Redemption, Arizona, and so on. I would be nothing more than Mayor Wilkins Bully Boy if I took that job. When you're in that position, and working for a Black Sorcerer and Warlock, there's no way you can avoid at least some of that darkness seeping into you as well." I explained.

"Huh. I guess that makes sense." Mused Xander.

"Can we go back to talkin' 'bout you not needing the money? Just how loaded are you, Uly?" Asked Faith.

"Enough that I didn't need to worry about taking the Job." I answered.

"Ulysses is the Majority Shareholder of a couple big regional companies, plus one multinational. That's besides all the loot we get from hunting." Smirked Xander.

"Damn. I shoulda asked for a bit of pocket cash to get set up with." Grumbled Faith.

"We can talk later. For now, I'm hungry and we should check in on Oz, Giles, and Willow. Much as I don't like Willow, Oz and Giles usually have most of the common sense in the group that hangs around Buffy most of the time." I sighed.

"I can make some calls, see if folks wanna do dinner." Offered Xander.

"Besides, you promised to vouch for me with B's watcher, so we were gonna haveta do this anyway." Reminded Faith.

"Right, do it, Xan. In the meantime, Faith and I should unpack." I confirmed.

As Xander headed for the Kitchen to make the calls, Faith and I unloaded my Camaro. Bags of Holding were a major lifesaver, because it turns out that we would wind up having to convert one of the rooms I was using as an Armory to a bedroom for Faith. Between Sheila, Xander, Amy, Myself, and now Faith, my converted warehouse apartment was now effectively at capacity in terms of residents. To the point where we wouldn't actually be able to have anyone stay the night for any real length of time and would have to book a hotel room. Of course, that by itself was an issue because of the lack of Thresholds and Protections on Hotel Rooms. Every time I stayed in one, I wound up having to cast my own wards for the duration of my stay in order to feel secure.

At any rate, between the unpacking and the converting of the Armory to Faith's Bedroom, we wound up spending the entire rest of the day getting situated. Before we knew it, Dinner with Giles, Oz, and Willow was creeping up on us, and we had to get ready. Giles had suggested a Pub that had just appeared, apropos of nothing, a few days ago, the Compass and Clock. Apparently, it had appeared in a vacant lot that had been where the BluffCo Warehouse had been before BluffCo had it bulldozed a few years back during a period of asset consolidation. Giles was suspiscious and had told us to come dressed for anything. Apparently, he figured it was one of those establishments.

See, it was a known fact in certain in-the-know circles that when Hellmouths and other interdimensional gateways were involved, sometimes, a certain variety of establishment would crop up during auspicious alignments of the cosmos. These establishments, unless otherwise anchored to a point in your reality, tended to disappear within a few years of showing up, as the alignments of the cosmos shifted. They could be pubs, mysterious curio shops, hidden marketplaces, odd hotels, or what have you, however, they all tended to have one thing in common. They were attatched to a nexus point between dimensions that allowed for planar and dimensional commerce, travel, and the like.

If this was one of those establishments, it would be wise for us to check it out. Plus, those sorts of establishments were often a source of power for anyone looking to get a leg up on local issues. After all, interdimensional commerce meant the potential to purchase out of context items that could give you the edge you needed. The last time something like this happened was recorded as first appearing in fourteen-ninety-eight, showing up on and off over the next few years, before disappearing permanently in fifteen-oh-five. The World Serpent Inn, a mysterious public house, Inn, and Tavern, appeared in a field between the Town of Oxford and the Thames and Cherwell Rivers on the Southeast side of the Town. Apparently, a Watcher by the name of Sir Merryweather Travers scouted the place out and managed to win a large, seven-foot-long, Magical Two-Handed Sword called the Silencer of Bodash from a Hulking, Tanned, Brute in a game of dice. He used that sword later to slay the Dragon of Knightmare Castle, a large Red Dragon leftover from Lord Fear's Sack of the Castle in thirteen-twenty-seven.

If this was anything like that, then this was an opportunity we couldn't afford to pass up, hence why we were meeting up there. Of course, I threw on the Hydra Scale Brigandine Vest that I hadn't worn in a long time, along with the Owlbear Hide Boots and Worgskin Belt which I had made out of the corpses of various monsters that the Whirlwind had attempted to throw at us and which were enchanted to boost my Physical Abilities, Defense, and Freedom of Movement substantially. I cast a glamour over it all to appear like my normal, everyday, wear, then threw on my Jacket, with the Quigley Colt Revolver loaded with Blessed Silver Bullets and the Green Destiny in the Expanded Pockets, along with various potions. Xander, Meanwhile, took a much lighter approach, grabbing the Alchemically Treated Tarsus Drake Leather Vest, a magically enhanced leather bomber jacket, and a Blessed Silver Inlayed Enchanted Dagger. Faith, meanwhile, just looked like she was dressed to go out clubbing, in a pair of black leather pants, white tanktop, and leather jacket.

Then, together, we headed out for the Compass and Clock to meet with Giles, Oz, and Willow, and see what the new, potentially cross-dimensional, pub was all about. . .

XXXX

AN: All right, so here we have the next Chapter. Turns out, Xander, Amy, and Sheila had a hell of a time dealing with the Hydralisk, though they ultimately managed to do so. At the same time, the Special Forces has had them running around and solving various issues that they're too short-handed to deal with. Meanwhile, the Trio have been clearly getting more entrenched with the Government and the Local Economy of Sunnydale via their Company, Triarch Industries. Now there's a potentially cross-dimensional Pub that wasn't there last week in Sunnydale to check out, while Ulysses and Company catch up with Giles, Oz, and Willow. Faith also is looking for an introduction to Giles and Buffy from Ulysses. There's a lot going on in the next chapter.

Other nineities stuff in this chapter includes mentions of Sonya Blade, Jax Briggs, and Nightwolf from Mortal Kombat, Hadoukens and Guile from Street Fighter, Hydralisks from Starcraft, the Psionic Sphere Expedition from Sphere, the Turanic Raiders from Homeworld, Fifth Circle Evocation Spells, Bags of Holding, Potions of Extra Healing, the World Serpent Inn, Hydras, Owlbears, Worgs, and the Silencer of Bodash are all from Second Edition Dungeons and Dragons, Lord Fear, Knightmare Castle, and the Red Dragon of Knightmare Castle are from Knightmare, Little Bill Dagget and Big Whiskey Wyoming are from Unforgiven, John Herod and Redemption Arizona are from the Quick and the Dead, Tarsus Drakes are from Hercules the Legendary Journeys, the Quigley Colt Revolver is from Quigley Down Under, the Green Destiny is from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, BluffCo is from Doug, Danver Spectras are from Ridge Racer, Prehistoric Spiders and Canaima are from Arachnophobia, Yog the Old God of Cannibalism is from Conan the Barbarian, South Town and the Yamata-no-Orochi are from King of Fighters, and Penn Pavel Ale is from Malcolm in the Middle. Everything else is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

At any rate, the next chapter will be the meetup with Giles, Oz, and Willow at the Compass and Clock Pub. It is going to be the one place I break the rule I have for only including stuff from nineties properties, as with Transdimensional Hubs like this, there's a certain level of timey-wimeyness involved. Expect to see stuff from the Eighties and Two Thousands as well as the Nineties there.

Stay tuned. . .