Rulesverse update: Dispatches from the War: the First Battles: The Taming of the Hart (1/3)
Continuing the latest Rulesverse. This is an ensemble piece for the Rulesverse in its later years, featuring pretty much everyone eventually. In this update: Connor, Harmony, Faith, Spike. Rated PG13 for occasional language. This *is* a WIP, though as usual with the Rulesverse, it's episodic and you should get something out of it as a standalone. The First Battles should be posted this week. The rest of the war should follow pretty soon. And then the epitaphs. So yeah, it's more complicated than when I first planned it - hence the multiple subtitles, and posting in snippets. Watch this space for more...
*
The trinity has fractured. The example of the eagle has inspired the Hart to bid for freedom. The unity, some might say the fossilisation, of the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart, is dying.
With it, the Slayer Council's years of calm.
The Prologue is here. But now, the war is beginning. The warriors are taking up position.
The First Battles: The Taming of the Hart
Los Angeles, November 2015
Connor felt conflicted. On the one hand, it was nice to walk into the Hyperion and not be assailed by a gang of wannabe SSOs, desperate to get a look at the mysterious guy who ran the West Coast operations and was ‘nearly like a Boy Slayer. Seriously, you have to see him move.’
But the place felt dead now they'd all gone. Even in his half-memories of the Hyperion from before, there were always people around. Often bleeding people, often very bad people indeed. But people. Now, it echoed. The trainee Slayer Support Officers were in hiding. The warriors had left for the war. The other warriors.
He could tell Angel or someone was stopping by occasionally. The office looked fractionally more used than anything else; the mail was getting stacked and sometimes even opened. But the whole place screamed that the base of operations had moved far away. Okay, so Ohio was the current hotspot, but that too felt all wrong. Moving so much resource away from Los Angeles? There was going to be a reckoning here, sooner or later, or it wouldn’t be a true war with Wolfram and Hart.
For now, the West Coast operation was mostly just him. There was a single Slayer west of the Rockies, and she was currently dealing with an infestation in Vancouver. Not a whole lot of cover if Hell A decided to go critical. Connor wasn’t scared. Of course not. He’d grown up in a hell dimension, faced the Beast, killed his daughter, forgotten it all and not broken when he was forced remember. He’d even faced Cordelia without a blush (much of a blush), the few times their paths had crossed since. But he didn’t like being so alone. He felt both left behind (like a kid, which he so wasn’t) and dangerously alone with his responsibilities (like a scared kid, which he totally wasn’t either). Had to get over this. Had to.
It was better at the old Wolfram and Hart building. There were still routine ongoing projects being run out of the office space; mainly low key but still Council company. So he moved his base there. Slept in Angel’s penthouse. Weird, discomforting feeling, to take his father’s place so definitely. Though father was a (heh) relative term, and Stephen Reilly's father was safe upstate.
It was three days into his dislocated, lonely vigil that there was a knock on the door. “Helloooo?”
“Oh. Um. Come in, Harmony.” She would drive him insane, as usual, but he temporarily thought the distraction would be worth it.
“Hey Connor. Are you bored? I’m bored. I’ve been sitting by the Hellmouth looking for activity, and there so isn’t anything stirring, so I came back.”
“Weren’t you supposed to stay there for the whole war?” (Admittedly, no one thought the Sunnydale Hellmouth was still active. It was mostly a way of keeping Harmony out of the way in case she had one of her occasional bouts of half-hearted evil betrayal. She probably knew it, too.)
She shrugged. “It was boring. There’s no there there any more. But, if this is, like, the Apocalypse, I want to be there for the team. So I came back to offer my services.”
Demon typist: perfect for a war zone. “Okay, well we always need more logistics help, or-“
“I can fight. I’m pretty good now. I took classes.” Up to a point. True, she was better than your average human, but she’d been flattened by pretty much every Slayer they’d ever tried against her. Hair pulling still not the key to evil combat.
“Or I could be a double agent.” She said it teasingly, though it should have been the point of keeping unsoiled vampires around the place. Except every demon in the city knew where her loyalties lay. Mostly. And if they were wrong, it wouldn’t help the Council one bit. He wasn’t even bothering to respond to her bright suggestions as she followed that up with some other inane suggestions. Until:
“Oooh, and I was thinking about getting a soul.” Harmony smiled brightly, and then frowned as she spotted a chipped nail.
“Are you serious?” If the Council could actually convince vampires to give up their evil ways; voluntary resouling might spread among the undead. Connor could almost see Harmony, apostle to the vampires, bringing them an army of loyal undead. Admittedly with major psychological issues, judging by Angel, but maybe they would tolerate it better if they came voluntarily... This could be the start of-
Shrug. “Sure. It would, like, show I’m really one of the guys. It’s all hard being evil and soulless round here. I feel so excluded, and it’s totally unfair. I haven’t betrayed anyone for years. Not even people I really hate. Except for gossip, and that's not evil. But then I thought, isn’t it a really bad time to get a soul, if it’s the Apocalypse? Being evil could be my ticket to safety. So I think maybe later would be better.”
Ah. Of course not. But it was pretty amazing she’d even considered it. She was pretty-
Connor. You’re stopping right there. Just because your mother was a vampire, you are not going in this direction. Even if she keeps smiling at you that way.
*
Somewhere Near A Well-Connected Airport in Europe, November 2015
Faith opened the double doors with a flourish. “Operational Headquarters. Big words, big room.”
Her effort at inducing excitement fell pretty flat with Spike. “Looks like a room to me. Kind of office-y feel to it, and you know I hate that.”
“Like I love it so much? I can feel paperwork already.”
“Thought the whole point of this was that you and me get to run around killing stuff? Buffy and Giles are the ones sitting in the castle with the strategic overview.” Spike wandered over to the window and cautiously shifted a blind. Finding the panes grimy, and the lack of daylight almost total, he stood looking out. Gloomily. “Thought we were the warriors now?”
She sighed. “Yeah. It’s what I thought too. But cantcha just feel the bureaucracy building? We’re gonna have to know who’s where and how tough they are, and send out reinforcements. We’re gonna be damn lucky to get bloody at all.”
Spike’s backview continued to look gloomy. Which Faith had expected. “You miss her?”
Twitch of the shoulders. “Course.” Pause. “’Snot the first time I’ve fought without her, you know.”
Which was, as Spike would have said himself, a statement of the bloody obvious. Faith left it hanging.
“Just... I think she’s really done now. In her head, she can’t fight. Which we both know is crap, incidentally. Having her just settle for being an instructor... doesn’t seem like my Slayer any more.”
Faith really, really wanted to leave that hanging too. Imminent war not the perfect moment, and she’d never be better than crap at emotional stuff. She tried a cautious, “She lost a leg...”
“And she’s got a replacement,” shot back Spike, turning back to face the room in his annoyance. “As perfectly functional as Willow can make it, which is pretty bloody functional once the mages have added their spin to the cybernetics. It’s not that she can’t. She won’t. I think she’s...scared.”
“Fuck that.” Faith wasn’t letting him talk down Buffy’s courage. This was Buffy. She was right up in Spike’s face, about to rant, when she paused.
Buffy wouldn’t fight, anything more than the odd crossbow in support of a scuffle. Buffy wanted to hide the kids. Buffy had responsibilities. Buffy had got injured, and seen her plans for the future fall apart. Buffy wasn’t taking field jobs. Buffy was kicking around the castle with Giles, doing actual paperwork. Had been for years, without complaints.
He might be right. Shit. Faith’s perception of the world shook a little. No more Buffy in the fight.
“What’re we gonna do?”
Spike half-shrugged. “We’re gonna fight a transcontinental war against Evil Inc, Ms Lehane. ‘S what we’re gonna do. If we all survive, we can try some touchy-feely intervention thing. Right now, I got bigger things to worry about.”
Bigger, maybe. More important... not to Spike. But she had a war on five fronts to organise, and not even a damn internet connection yet.
Faith got to arranging the arsenal. But she didn’t forget about Buffy.
*
Part two
*
The trinity has fractured. The example of the eagle has inspired the Hart to bid for freedom. The unity, some might say the fossilisation, of the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart, is dying.
With it, the Slayer Council's years of calm.
The Prologue is here. But now, the war is beginning. The warriors are taking up position.
The First Battles: The Taming of the Hart
Los Angeles, November 2015
Connor felt conflicted. On the one hand, it was nice to walk into the Hyperion and not be assailed by a gang of wannabe SSOs, desperate to get a look at the mysterious guy who ran the West Coast operations and was ‘nearly like a Boy Slayer. Seriously, you have to see him move.’
But the place felt dead now they'd all gone. Even in his half-memories of the Hyperion from before, there were always people around. Often bleeding people, often very bad people indeed. But people. Now, it echoed. The trainee Slayer Support Officers were in hiding. The warriors had left for the war. The other warriors.
He could tell Angel or someone was stopping by occasionally. The office looked fractionally more used than anything else; the mail was getting stacked and sometimes even opened. But the whole place screamed that the base of operations had moved far away. Okay, so Ohio was the current hotspot, but that too felt all wrong. Moving so much resource away from Los Angeles? There was going to be a reckoning here, sooner or later, or it wouldn’t be a true war with Wolfram and Hart.
For now, the West Coast operation was mostly just him. There was a single Slayer west of the Rockies, and she was currently dealing with an infestation in Vancouver. Not a whole lot of cover if Hell A decided to go critical. Connor wasn’t scared. Of course not. He’d grown up in a hell dimension, faced the Beast, killed his daughter, forgotten it all and not broken when he was forced remember. He’d even faced Cordelia without a blush (much of a blush), the few times their paths had crossed since. But he didn’t like being so alone. He felt both left behind (like a kid, which he so wasn’t) and dangerously alone with his responsibilities (like a scared kid, which he totally wasn’t either). Had to get over this. Had to.
It was better at the old Wolfram and Hart building. There were still routine ongoing projects being run out of the office space; mainly low key but still Council company. So he moved his base there. Slept in Angel’s penthouse. Weird, discomforting feeling, to take his father’s place so definitely. Though father was a (heh) relative term, and Stephen Reilly's father was safe upstate.
It was three days into his dislocated, lonely vigil that there was a knock on the door. “Helloooo?”
“Oh. Um. Come in, Harmony.” She would drive him insane, as usual, but he temporarily thought the distraction would be worth it.
“Hey Connor. Are you bored? I’m bored. I’ve been sitting by the Hellmouth looking for activity, and there so isn’t anything stirring, so I came back.”
“Weren’t you supposed to stay there for the whole war?” (Admittedly, no one thought the Sunnydale Hellmouth was still active. It was mostly a way of keeping Harmony out of the way in case she had one of her occasional bouts of half-hearted evil betrayal. She probably knew it, too.)
She shrugged. “It was boring. There’s no there there any more. But, if this is, like, the Apocalypse, I want to be there for the team. So I came back to offer my services.”
Demon typist: perfect for a war zone. “Okay, well we always need more logistics help, or-“
“I can fight. I’m pretty good now. I took classes.” Up to a point. True, she was better than your average human, but she’d been flattened by pretty much every Slayer they’d ever tried against her. Hair pulling still not the key to evil combat.
“Or I could be a double agent.” She said it teasingly, though it should have been the point of keeping unsoiled vampires around the place. Except every demon in the city knew where her loyalties lay. Mostly. And if they were wrong, it wouldn’t help the Council one bit. He wasn’t even bothering to respond to her bright suggestions as she followed that up with some other inane suggestions. Until:
“Oooh, and I was thinking about getting a soul.” Harmony smiled brightly, and then frowned as she spotted a chipped nail.
“Are you serious?” If the Council could actually convince vampires to give up their evil ways; voluntary resouling might spread among the undead. Connor could almost see Harmony, apostle to the vampires, bringing them an army of loyal undead. Admittedly with major psychological issues, judging by Angel, but maybe they would tolerate it better if they came voluntarily... This could be the start of-
Shrug. “Sure. It would, like, show I’m really one of the guys. It’s all hard being evil and soulless round here. I feel so excluded, and it’s totally unfair. I haven’t betrayed anyone for years. Not even people I really hate. Except for gossip, and that's not evil. But then I thought, isn’t it a really bad time to get a soul, if it’s the Apocalypse? Being evil could be my ticket to safety. So I think maybe later would be better.”
Ah. Of course not. But it was pretty amazing she’d even considered it. She was pretty-
Connor. You’re stopping right there. Just because your mother was a vampire, you are not going in this direction. Even if she keeps smiling at you that way.
*
Somewhere Near A Well-Connected Airport in Europe, November 2015
Faith opened the double doors with a flourish. “Operational Headquarters. Big words, big room.”
Her effort at inducing excitement fell pretty flat with Spike. “Looks like a room to me. Kind of office-y feel to it, and you know I hate that.”
“Like I love it so much? I can feel paperwork already.”
“Thought the whole point of this was that you and me get to run around killing stuff? Buffy and Giles are the ones sitting in the castle with the strategic overview.” Spike wandered over to the window and cautiously shifted a blind. Finding the panes grimy, and the lack of daylight almost total, he stood looking out. Gloomily. “Thought we were the warriors now?”
She sighed. “Yeah. It’s what I thought too. But cantcha just feel the bureaucracy building? We’re gonna have to know who’s where and how tough they are, and send out reinforcements. We’re gonna be damn lucky to get bloody at all.”
Spike’s backview continued to look gloomy. Which Faith had expected. “You miss her?”
Twitch of the shoulders. “Course.” Pause. “’Snot the first time I’ve fought without her, you know.”
Which was, as Spike would have said himself, a statement of the bloody obvious. Faith left it hanging.
“Just... I think she’s really done now. In her head, she can’t fight. Which we both know is crap, incidentally. Having her just settle for being an instructor... doesn’t seem like my Slayer any more.”
Faith really, really wanted to leave that hanging too. Imminent war not the perfect moment, and she’d never be better than crap at emotional stuff. She tried a cautious, “She lost a leg...”
“And she’s got a replacement,” shot back Spike, turning back to face the room in his annoyance. “As perfectly functional as Willow can make it, which is pretty bloody functional once the mages have added their spin to the cybernetics. It’s not that she can’t. She won’t. I think she’s...scared.”
“Fuck that.” Faith wasn’t letting him talk down Buffy’s courage. This was Buffy. She was right up in Spike’s face, about to rant, when she paused.
Buffy wouldn’t fight, anything more than the odd crossbow in support of a scuffle. Buffy wanted to hide the kids. Buffy had responsibilities. Buffy had got injured, and seen her plans for the future fall apart. Buffy wasn’t taking field jobs. Buffy was kicking around the castle with Giles, doing actual paperwork. Had been for years, without complaints.
He might be right. Shit. Faith’s perception of the world shook a little. No more Buffy in the fight.
“What’re we gonna do?”
Spike half-shrugged. “We’re gonna fight a transcontinental war against Evil Inc, Ms Lehane. ‘S what we’re gonna do. If we all survive, we can try some touchy-feely intervention thing. Right now, I got bigger things to worry about.”
Bigger, maybe. More important... not to Spike. But she had a war on five fronts to organise, and not even a damn internet connection yet.
Faith got to arranging the arsenal. But she didn’t forget about Buffy.
*
Part two