Part I
Part Ia
Part II
Part III
Chapters 7 & 8

The Intersection

“Look, I can help you.” Hardison’s voice was rising in panic. “Just tell me what stores you see.”

Parker looked around. “Nearest intersection has a… Cobalt jewelry and a Costello ice cream. Big fountain thing. No skylight.”

“Cobalt, Costello. Check. Man that’s a big mall. It’s almost like… well, okay. Elliot?”

“Sec.” Elliot had taken advantage of the situation to bash the man’s head into the floor twice. He gave the guy one more heavy thunk. “Yo. One down. No cameras, no mirrors… here comes another one. Parker?”

“Ready.” She was smiling. Of course she was.

“So,” Hardison mused over their earpieces, “is this why the mall is empty, or is someone trying to send us a message? Are we getting too close?”

Elliot slammed his fist into their attacker’s jaw while Parker swept low and kicked his legs out from under him. He went down, and three more came around the corner.

“Too close?” Elliot punctuated his complaint with a roundhouse kick. “We haven’t gotten anywhere yet. You’ve been watching too much TV again, man.”

“These guys are strong,” Parker commented idly. She was around one’s neck, thighs around his throat.

“Parker, you hang upside down from buildings by your fingers,” Hardison pointed out. “I’ve got the infrared, but I think it’s broken. Man, what kind of mall has infrared security?”

“You know, this is why Sunnydale doesn’t have any visitors.” A perky voice complained from the sidelines. “We get some nice scruffy, scary-looking men and bam, someone attacks them.”

“Scruffy?” Elliot snarled. “Who’re you calling scruffy?”

“Who’re you calling a man?” Parker countered. “Man, does this man need to breathe, or what?”

“Probably not.” A blonde girl stepped out of the shadows. “And they’re not very friendly, are they?”

“Perfectly,” Elliot punched one attacker in the solar plexus, “Fine.”

“Ooh, you’re something, but you’re out of your league here, soldier boy.” She bounced into the fray with a spin kick, shoving the third attacker away from Elliot.

“I’ve got this,” he grunted. “…and don’t…” He twisted the man’s arm until it broke, “call me that.”

“He’s not a soldier,” Parker offered cheerfully. She hadn’t managed to asphyxiate her target, but neither had he managed to get her off of him. “He’s with us.”

The newcomer didn’t even raise an eyebrow at the apparent non sequitur. “You’re good, both of you. But these things don’t breathe and they don’t fall down.” She punctuated the last by shoving a large wooden stick through the ribcage of one of the attackers. “Unless you know how to hit them. “

The assailant fell apart in a cloud of ash. The woman twisted around, repeating the move with the second attacker. She looked up as Parker whistled; she was holding out her hand. “Gimme?”

“Don’t miss.” The new girl tossed the piece of wood to Parker in a low underhand toss; Parker caught it, bent over backwards, and shoved it through her target’s back while she flipped off of him. He vanished in a puff as she landed.

“That was fun! Do you get to do that all the time around here?”

“P… Alisha,” Eliot snarled. He turned his glare on the newcomer before Parker could even blink. “What the hell were they and who the hell are you.”

“Also thank you,” Parker offered. “What?” She looked between the two of them staring at her. “N… Mr. Boss says we ought to be polite, and… Mrs. Boss agrees.”

“Who am I? I think a better question is ‘who are you and what are you doing here?’”

Elliot sighed. “Shoulda sent someone else,” he grumbled, mostly to Hardison. “Right. Thank you.” He looked at the stick still in Parker’s hand, and the small piles of ash on the ground. “What falls apart like that? I’ve fought some weirder people, and some even weirder shit, but nothing that falls apart like that.”

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No.” Elliot didn’t so much answer as snarl it. “We’re from Boston.”

The Introduction

“Buffy, where did you go, there’s shoes to be bought…”

“Buffy, help, Cordelia is trying to make me have an opinion!”

Cordelia and Xander skidded to a stop as they reached Buffy and the two strangers.

“Oh, ick.” Cordelia frowned. “Did you find more of your freaky little friends? Is this the new Kendra? Because seriously, one of you is enough.” Cordelia wrinkled her nose.

“I can still take back the offer for shoes, you know.” Buffy turned her attention to the strangers. “You’re not from around here, you fight like pros… who are you?”

The blonde woman — blonde acrobat, Buffy thought, although next Slayer was not a bad guess — waved cheerfully. “We’re here to join the youth group!”

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Part I
Part Ia
Part II
Part III

The Reconnaissance

“So, complaint one, this place is in like the eighteenth century or something. LIke nothing here at all is computerized. That’s going to mean a lot more Parker and Sophie and a lot less me.” Hardison frowned at his computer screen.

“And Tara.” Sophie opened the door to their rental house to reveal her sometimes-partner. “She’s consulting on this one.”

Nate raised his eyebrows. “Hello, Tara. Sophie…”

“No, I didn’t invite her, Nate. I know how you get about these things.” Sophie held up both of her hands.

“I invited myself. Sophie and I were chatting about your little mission here, and, well, it’s Sunnydale. You need a guide.”

“A guide?” Hardison frowned. “A big town, this is not.”

“I’m not talking about the streets.” She dropped her bag and checked her make-up in the mirror. “I’m talking about the nightlife.”

“We’ve handled the mob before, Tara.” Nate frowned at her. “This one doesn’t have a revenue stream. We can’t pay you.”

“Trust me, I’ll make money. If I can’t make money in Sunnydale, then I can’t make money anywhere — and I can make money everywhere.” She made a kiss-face at the mirror and then, only then, turned to look at the three teammates. “Nate, Sophie, Hardison, good to see you. Eliot and Parker running recon?”

Hardison coughed. “Something like that…”

~

“The mall,” Eliot complained. “The freaking mall.”

“Teenagers?” Parker shrugged. “That’s what Nate said. Teenagers like malls, right?”

He side-eyed her. “You’re something else, you know that, right? Yes, teenagers like malls. So where are all the teenagers?”

“Curfew?” Parker guessed. “Do teenagers have that?”

“Why are you asking me?” Eliot nearly snarled it out. He was looking back and forth, scanning for danger, while they were faced with nothing more exciting than a nearly-empty mall.

Parker shrugged. “Seemed like you’d know.”

Eliot glanced at her, then dropped his voice and moved in closer. “Look, I was never what you’d called exactly a normal teenager, either. None of us were, except maybe Nate. Okay?”

“Teenagers are hard,” Parker muttered. “They talk a different language, and the language changes all the time. It’s like being in Paris and suddenly finding out they speak German. That wasn’t any fun either.”

“What… never mind. Look, we’re pretending to be — we’re going in as adults, all right? And the one thing teenagers know about adults is that they’re clueless. Use that.”

“Clueless.” She widened her eyes. “Like normal people!”

“Exactly. So… look. You know that feeling you get when you look at normal people? Like they’re all a bit ridiculous? Just use that. Everyone’s a bit ridiculous.”

“Have you noticed,” Parker shifted gears without warning, “how for a mall, there’s no mirrors here? When Sophie goes shopping… there’s mirrors everywhere. This place… I’ve counted something like three.”

“And there’s this guy sneaking up on us, too,” Eliot muttered. “Go check out the mall,” he sneered. “See what the teenagers in this town do. Thanks, Nate.” He ducked down, barely missing a swinging grab, and swept the attacker’s feet out from under him. “Amateurs.”

The man on the ground shifted; Eliot grabbed his hair. “P… Alisha.” At the last moment he remembered they were here under alias. “Cameras?”

“None.” She looked again. “There’s two camera balls there, but there’s no camera in them. And they didn’t even bother with the cheapest hidden cameras or anything.”

“A kill zone,” Elliot muttered. “It’s a freaking kill zone. I’m gonna murder Hardison.”

“I heard that, man.” Hardison’s voice popped up in both their ears. “All right, so what you’re in is also a dead zone. Half of that place, I can’t even find you. Oh, and the good news? Security ain’t coming.”

Eight: The Debrief

“I don’t know why driving you to the mall is part of my job. I mean, I don’t know why I have a job here at all. I mean, I’m not part of your little scooby gang. It’s not my thing. But here I am, it’s nearly dark, and we’re going to the mall…”

“Because we’re going to buy you a new pair of shoes,” Buffy interrupted, “just as soon as you tell us what you found out from Franklin. Remember, pointy bribery?”

“Yeah, well, just make sure that’s the only pointy thing you aim my way, creep girl.” Cordelia glared at the steering wheel.

“The intel, Cordy?” Xander prompted from the back seat.

“‘The intel’,” she mocked. What are you, army boy?”

“Shoes, Cordy.” Buffy flapped a hand in Cordelia’s direction. “What’s the scoop?”

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