14

Giles refused to react. They were fucking with him, and just wanted him to be scared. If he reacted at all, he would be playing into their hands.

So he kept all expression from his face, which he felt growing up British had allowed him to do, but inside it felt like a cold claw had gripped his intestines and refused to let go. “You were expecting me to do this?”

The little girl that was the current, mocking form of the Senior Partners grinned at him in a savage, leering way. “You mortals always see the small picture. No wonder you’re always playing catch up.”

Worse and worse. He felt the coldness bleeding through him now, oozing like ice water into his veins. No. Oh no.

"Oh, stop with the villain monologue," Ate snapped.

The little girl looked over at her in annoyance. "What?"

"You know damn well what I mean. 'Before I kill you, here's my evil plan in its entirety.' Is anyone actually that self-impressed and stupid?"

The girl's black eyes narrowed. "Don't make it worse for yourself, Ate."

She scoffed derisively. "If you're gonna kill me, kill me, and spare me the bullshit."

Before they could, Giles asked, "You don't just mean Arba's plan, do you?"

That regained him the attention of the Senior Partners, who snickered derisively. "You're the Watcher. You tell me."

"What is this nonsense about?" Ate demanded impatiently.

"The Slayers," Giles guessed.

The feral grin on the Partner's face confirmed it. "How stupid do you think we are? Do you think we didn't know what was going on? Did you think we didn't allow it?"

Giles felt cold and now vaguely nauseous. Oh no. "You knew we were going to activate them."

"And we helped." The little girl was so gleeful she was almost laughing. "Your Charles Darwin got some things right, you know. Survival of the fittest. Natural selection. Adaptation."

It all sank in like a two ton glacier settling at the bottom of a gelid bay. But Ate was missing key pieces of this conversation, impatience showing on her face. "What are you blathering about?"

The Senior Partners, for whatever reason, decided to indulge her. "The strongest will survive, and become stronger. Gone is the dead weight, the inbred monstrosities, the poor excuses for monsters. And nature abhors a vacuum."

"More Slayers equals more demons," Giles said, seeing it clearly for the first time. How had he not seen it before? "Worse demons."

"Harder, faster, stronger, better," the little girl crowed. "The next generation will be awesome in its fearsomeness. And you will be responsible, Rupert. Thank you. We never could have done it without you."

"That doesn't make any sense," Ate insisted. "More Slayers means more dead demons, not better ones."

"You're forgetting the balance, Ate," the Senior Partner replied. "If there is a swing too far to one side, there will always be a similar swing in the opposite direction. It's always been that way. Thank the Powers That Be."

She made a noise of disgust. "Those pretentious gits. I'd rather not. Why the hell am I still here, anyways? If you're gonna kill me, would you do it already? I'm bored."

"Kill you? Ate, you're mistaken. We want to give you an opportunity to return to your former glory."

"What?" both she and Giles replied in unison.

Giles had thought things were bad enough, and yet somehow, they had now gotten worse.

****

Since Oz had nothing, it was all up to John now. Whoopty fucking do.

But at least it did give John an opportunity to play around. He created a fire "dragon" (okay, it wasn't dragon shaped, it was a snake if you were really generous, but that was it; it was a big tube of fire) that he let go out before them, scaring the demons (?) ahead of them out of the halls. You'd think, if this was hell, they'd be used to fire, but apparently not. He was glad, as that was pretty much all he had. If Whoomp had anything to add to defense, he didn't say. Or do. He did nothing but squelch behind them on the wall, in violation of all known laws of physics. Why the hell was he - assuming it was a he; how did you tell? - tagging along with them anyways? Maybe he was a friend of Oz's.

Oz had sniffed Paloma out, to a side cave where she was chained to a wall. John had scared the demons guarding her away with his fireworks display, although really, as dungeons went, it was kind of sad. It looked like the ad hoc set of a no budget porn video.

"Who the hell are you guys?" Paloma demanded, as Oz tried to figure out how to get the chains off.

"I'm a werewolf, and he's a fire guy. We're here to rescue you. Or something. Really, I was added last minute," Oz said, examining one of the wrist shackles. "And I did have clothes then. Just so you know. I had this really cool t-shirt that I'm gonna miss. I wish I could file for workman's comp."

Whoomp squelched up the far side wall, and said, "Umm, key. I think."

One of the fleeing demons must have dropped it. Wow - ugly and incompetent. If this was hell, they needed to hire better people.

Paloma was kind of pretty, actually, dark hair and dark eyes, like Penelope Cruz's younger sister, but she was looking at them like they were the fuck craziest people she had ever seen. "Are you mutants or what?"

"I am," John volunteered. "I'm with the X-Men." Was he? Oh well, no point in letting little details like that get in the way. "I'm Pyro."

Her brow furrowed in consternation. "Pyro? The guy who defected to Magneto's camp? You're a bad guy."

"No I'm not. I'm back." He paused briefly. "It was a phase." Actually, he'd be damned if he knew why he was back, except that after Magneto was forcibly cured, the Brotherhood became a joke. Oh, he tried to lead it in the right direction, but kids nowadays seemed like total idiots, and then Logan threatened to kill him by pinning him against the wall with his fist to his forehead, and ... well damn, he couldn't trace his decision back at all. It was like he woke up one day and decided he needed to not be "evil" anymore. Which made no sense at all - he wasn't "evil" to begin with - but since his life made very little sense, he couldn't say he was surprised. Shit happened, and sometimes it happened in ways that couldn't be explained or excused. You'd just think, if he threw the last few years of his life away, he'd have a better explanation.

Paloma was staring at him in open disbelief, but not for long, as Whoomp was right about the key - Oz got her unchained. She rubbed her wrists and thanked him, subtly stepping away from the mostly nude green haired guy. "Do you trust this clown?" At first, he thought she was asking him about Oz, but he suddenly realized she was asking Oz about him.

"Hey," he protested weakly. Was he not in hell for her? Did that not prove he was a good guy now?

Oz just shrugged, and said in that laconic way of his, "I've had no problems with him."

"The fire thing's kinda neat," Whoomp offered.

Paloma looked at the flattened slug demon thing. "What are you?"

"That's Whoomp," Oz said. "He wants waffles."

"I love waffles," Whoomp confirmed.

Okay - this was a collective psychotic break, wasn't it? None of this was actually happening. They were probably all on a subway platform, ranting about the Illuminati in their drinking water and shitting their pants.

“Can we just go?” John finally asked. “Logan can’t hold out as a punchin’ bag forever, although I know he’s crazy enough to try.”

“Logan?” Paloma asked, and then stopped in her tracks, wide eyed with surprise. “Do you mean Wolverine? He’s here?”

“Yeah.” He hated the defensive tone he heard in his own voice. But did she have to sound so suspicious of him, yet so excited to hear Logan was here? It really wasn’t fair.

“Wow. I wanted to meet him,” she said, walking past him out of the cave.

“You’re welcome,” John shouted after her sarcastically. She didn’t respond.

Oz tossed the key aside and shrugged. “The guy’s hot. Chicks dig that.”

“You could break your hand on his torso,” Whoomp said. “Well, if you have a hand.”

John just glared at them. “You’re both fucking nuts.”

“I like peanuts, but only if they’re honey roasted,” Whoomp said.

“Cut that out!” John snapped, and then turned and stomped after Paloma. He heard Oz say, presumably to Whoomp, “Not a big fan of legumes, I guess.”

All of Logan’s friends were fucking nuts. Every single one of them. Would it kill him to have a sane friend?

He found Paloma standing stock still in the hall, watching the bloody slugfest. Logan was so covered in blood he may as well have been wearing a red t-shirt (and face mask, and turtleneck), but somehow he was still going. Still bleeding, still losing the fight, and yet somehow still fighting. He was like the fucking Energizer Bunny of punishment.

“Stay down, you stupid fucker,” Arba growled down at him. “You can’t beat me.”

Sad but true. None of them could beat him. They were screwed.

Arba started stomping towards them, flexing his bloody hands. “Where do you think you’re going, little girl?”

Logan raised himself up to his hands and knees, blood drooling from his mouth and dripping from his nose, but his eyes were full of as much calculated anger as they were of pain. “All at once,” he growled, his voice sounding like gravel in a trash compactor. “Pyro, burn him inside out.” And with that he lunged forward and cut Arba off at the knees. Literally - his lower legs fell one way and Arba fell another.

“Son of a bitch!” Arba yelled, sounding more annoyed than anything else.

“What?” John asked, but since Arba had taken a blind swing at Logan while falling and clocked him in the head, John was on his own. Burn him inside out? How did he do that? That other dude was made of flames, but not this one. He’d have to get the fire in him first, and how did you do that?

“What’s the problem?” Oz asked him.

“He doesn’t have fire in him, that’s the problem! How do I do that?”

“Fire in him?” Paloma repeated dubiously, like she hadn’t heard him correctly.

Arba had turned himself around, on hands and bloody stumps, and grabbed his severed legs, which he pressed against their respective stumps. They seemed to immediately adhere back on, the skin briefly flowing like liquid. Was that how he healed so fast? No wonder nothing Logan was doing was working - even chopping this guy up wasn’t a hindrance.

Arba turned around to face Logan, but as soon as he did, Logan slashed his lower jaw off with his claws and tossed the damn jaw part down the corridor as far as he could. Arba grabbed Logan’s skull and introduced it to the floor several times, with deep, disturbing thudding sounds. It was a good thing he had an adamantium skull, or his brain would be a pulpy mush oozing out his ears. Of course, maybe it already was.

“Bob, it’s about fucking time you got here!” Oz exclaimed suddenly.

Arba stopped and looked around frantically, a big hole in his face that his jaw used to cover up, his tongue dangling out like a seatbelt stuck in a car door. It was healing, though, the flesh and bone miraculously growing back as they watched. John looked around for Bob too, but Oz nudged him and nodded towards Arba. “Now.”

Oh, it was a distraction. Logan had given him a way to get fire inside Arba; now he only had to hope it worked. John flicked his lighter and sent a ball of fire straight down Arba’s gaping gullet. He grabbed his throat and made a choking noise, as John concentrated on trying to keep the fire alive and blooming deep within Arba. There was oxygen in his lungs - or whatever passed for his lungs - right? He concentrated on sending it there, on the air within feeding the flame, keeping it going. He’d never sent a flame inside anyone before - that had never even come up as an option when he was exploring his powers with Magneto - and he didn’t know if it would work. But goddamn, this proved Mystique was right: Magneto always said Logan was a dumb beast, but she always said that yeah, he was a beast, but he could be inventively vicious. She had said it like it was an admirable thing, and who knew, maybe it was. At least in this scenario.

The flame was still going, John could feel it responding to him - how he couldn’t actually say or explain, but fire was like an urge, a sixth sense - but it was struggling and so was he. So was Arba, who was coughing and choking, his healing factor fighting against the constant burning even as his jaw mostly healed over. Logan stabbed him in the back and ripped to the side, severing his spinal cord, although that just seemed to piss Arba off. He turned and started pounding Logan again, who just stabbed randomly, cutting him in a hundred places, making him leak blood like a sieve. He wasn’t healing as fast now, which must have been Logan’s plan.

“I need to get in there,” Oz muttered. It took all John’s concentration to focus on the flame, so he was only peripherally aware of Oz and Paloma. Honestly, he found himself morbidly curious about this - how long could he keep a fire alive in someone? In an ordinary person, breathing in fire would be enough to kill them, but this guy possessed the mother of all healing factors. This was a chance to answer a question he could never even ponder in the real world.

Oz turned to Paloma and said, “I need you to hurt me.”

She reacted to that statement the way anybody probably would. “Are you fucking crazy?”

“I can’t wolf out without help. Hurt me.”

“Fuck off, weirdo.”

John might have offered to scorch Oz if he thought he could. But maybe he was too ADD or something, but he was pretty sure he couldn’t keep two flames going at once, not under these conditions. Maybe if he wasn’t struggling to keep baking Arba like a turkey on a spit he could’ve, but right now things were too weird.

But things, as always, got weirder. Oz suddenly grabbed Paloma by the throat and slammed her against the wall. “I said hurt me, bitch!” Oh, great, now he was having a psychotic break.

Paloma kicked Oz in the groin, which really must have hurt considering he wasn’t even wearing any pants, and punched him, so hard blow flew. Oz staggered back, grabbing his face. “Don’t you fucking touch me, asshole!” Paloma added unnecessarily. (Seriously - you punch a guy, your point has been made.)

After a moment, Oz looked up, blood oozing from his split lower lip, and his eyes an intense and eerie yellow. “Thank you. Now stand back.”

And Oz started to change.