Scurrying across the dust and sand, a lizard, sleek and soundless, took a chance and disappeared into the wide crater in its path; in search of food, shelter, or just unable to find its way around the rim. The crater, a brutal disfigurement in the landscape, stretches as far as the eye can see ahead and to the left and right. In reality it isn't actually all that large, but then again, a whole town now lies at the bottom of it, nothing but broken pieces of what once stood.

Hand covering her eyes to ward off the glaring sun, a slayer stopped at the edge and peered into the rubble, the devastation. With a sigh she shook her head. The official story is that the town was lost to an earthquake, but she knew better. The earth may have trembled but it wasn't nature's doing, it was something far stronger, and far too terrifying for the masses to learn about. Nobody was rescued from the rubble, no bodies found, and nobody came forward to explain why.

The people of Sunnydale, they knew something was coming and fled long before the town dropped out of existence. They didn't know why they knew, and they didn't question, just went with instincts deep in the marrow of their bones and ran. The few - though still too many - who lost their lives there went unrecorded, a handful of souls who had died to keep evil from fulfilling its threat. They would be remembered by girls all over the world. Girls now connected. Chosen.

The slayer dropped to one knee, picking a small round stone up off the scorched ground beside her. Throwing it out in front of her, she watched as it travelled to the limits of her sight, gravity pulling it downwards, into the hole, to the twisted remains of a place she had once wanted to call home.

"Welcome back, Faith," she mumbled to herself.

A greeting she was sure she'd never heard directed at her before. Not here. Not by anybody that actually gave a damn.

Standing, Faith brushed dust from her jeans and gave the crater one last look before turning and grabbing the heavy backpack behind her. She hefted it up onto her shoulder, its length almost the size of her. Who knew how long she was going to have to stay here. Perhaps permanently. A cruel twist of fate.

She chuckled to herself as she headed off the highway. There had been a sign there once, welcoming everybody - even her - to this town. It was gone now, along with the rest of the road as it crumbled away. A cruel twist indeed, and all her own doing. The call from Giles hadn't been that much of a surprise; she'd been expecting it. Evil never really went away. Evil wasn't one to run, it hid. It hid until it needed to feed again. Until it needed to do more than just dream of the taste of vengeance.

The hellmouth was beginning to bubble once more with the creeping darkness of all that it held.

In the past month there had been reports of strange sightings and disappearances near the crater. Unsuspecting tourists clicking away on their cameras, hoping to capture the scene of disaster in all its gory detail, the first to feel the boil of a hellmouth simmering at the brink of rebirth. Through various channels the reports found their way to slayer central in Cleveland. Buffy - semi-retired and done with this particular plot of California desert - wanted no part in the team sent to check the area for activity. She left it to Giles.

He sent a small group of slayers, lead by Kennedy, and their findings were clear. There was definitely supernatural activity, and it was being fed by the hellmouth. What they couldn't be certain of, without longer exposure, was the amount of activity. They had dusted one vampire and spotted one rather small, rather elusive demon in the week long mission. Not exactly hellmouth standards, but they reported that they could faintly feel the danger, the ever present tingle that an active hellmouth sent skittering across a slayer's skin.

She could feel it too, lingering at the edges of her senses. Three years and two months since its demise, Sunnydale's hellmouth was slowly and steadily clawing its way back into the unsuspecting world around it. It was now Faith's job to see what would happen next, to monitor, dust any vamps and slay possible demons.

Faith wasn't exactly sure why she'd taken on this role; she'd been happily making her way around the world, just basking in the history, when Giles had called. He'd shared his findings and worries and she had shuddered at the memory of Sunnydale. Not its demise, but of her past there. A past she - for the most part - wasn't proud of. Maybe seeking to atone somewhat, even still, Faith offered Giles her help. He was reluctant to allow Kennedy to take the job as she was needed in Cleveland since Buffy had decided slaying was no longer her only priority.

Chuckling as she imagined Kennedy throwing herself whole heartedly into the position of top dog in slayer central, Faith followed the rim of the crater, walking far from the road. She didn't need tourists stumbling into her as she waited for the hellmouth to throw her a homecoming party.

"Why the fuck am I doing this?" she grumbled to herself as she trudged across the desert, the heat twisting up around her, making her sticky and uncomfortable.

Spotting a grouping of trees and rocks not too far ahead, Faith headed towards them. This had been where the scouting party had set up camp, and it would be her new home, for now. She threw her pack to the floor by a large rock, and relaxed her body down next to a leafy tree shading the ground. Perching against the trunk, Faith guzzled water and wiped sweat from her brow.

In a few hours the sun would set and the temperature would drop; getting her tent up and a fire ready to light was the first order of business. Then she'd take a walk, checking the area for anything out of the ordinary. Hopefully she was far enough from the nearest roads to ensure solitude, but she was still prepared to deter any possible tourists or hikers that came her way. Not many people liked to stick around an overly aggressive girl with a big knife.

A surly attitude had gotten her around the world without too many problems; the odd scrape with the law wriggled out of with a bit of cunning and charm. Anybody who dared to tread on her toes or test her patience found themselves on the wrong side of a threat. She didn't intend to allow redemption to turn her into a target. She could be 'good', but still be a little bad.

Pushing up from the floor, Faith began unpacking the things she'd need for the night. Her tent went up without much fuss, sticks for a fire collected and arranged. She blinked up towards the sun as it began its descent, and rubbed at her belly. Dinner could wait a while; she wanted to take a look around first.

There wasn't much to see beyond a few abandoned buildings and stripped cars close to the crater, but a raised bit of ground just inside the rim grabbed her attention as she slowly made her way further and further from her camp. The ground looked like it had been pushed up inside the crater, bits of rubble mingled with sand and dirt, making a kind of walkway that lead down into the vast hole stretching out ahead. She could see no buildings standing, no sign of life, but something had made this, built it up as an easy point of access.

"Interesting," she mused.

The last team here hadn't reported this so maybe it was new, which meant her journey had not been wasted.

She would come back here later, when the sun had set, and see what - if anything - emerged. For now, as her stomach grew ever emptier, she turned and made her way back to her tent. Dinner was a packet of warmed soup and some bread she'd bought before leaving LA. It wasn't much but it would do. She'd packed lightly, figuring she could hitch a ride to the nearest town in a few days for more supplies. The highway was a fair hike, but manageable.

As red and purple splashed clouds settled themselves around the setting sun, Faith lay back on her sleeping bag, head cradled by the one essential she would take everywhere - her lushly filled pillow. Choosing to lay her bed out beside the tent instead of inside, she enjoyed the last waves of heat from the sun before it slipped away.

The sounds of animals roused Faith from a brief nap and she pushed her hair out of her eyes, blinking into the darkness as her heightened senses awakened. A crow filled the night air with noise as it circled above, swooping towards her before it decided she wasn't actually all that interesting. Its caws and calls echoed into the crater as it distanced itself from her and the embers of her small fire. Quickly securing her bedding away inside the tent, Faith stretched, twitched, checked her weapons, then set out on patrol.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary as she checked the nearby area, moving closer to where she'd spotted the ramp - or whatever it was - that lead down into the belly of the beast that was once Sunnydale. Another quick check of her weapons and Faith descended along the now obvious path, carefully picking her way over jagged bits of wood and heavy slabs of concrete. The ramp had most certainly been built from the bottom up, by somebody - or some thing - strong enough to shift large amounts of dirt and rubble in a short time.

"Curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice," Faith said as she felt the shadows begin to sharpen her focus.

The ramp sloped down steadily, twisting to the right as it went. The edge of the crater began to loom behind her, becoming a cliff she doubted she'd be able to scale in a hurry. Thankfully the path down seemed stable, solid. She highly doubted it was built by nosy tourists. Scientists perhaps, looking for clues behind the town's collapse, but Giles had been quite clear that the government seemed utterly disinterested in the crater and its cause. There were no reports of investigations underway or planned for.

"Demon excavators," Faith said to herself. "Just what we need."

As she reached what appeared to be the bottom of the ramp she figured she was about halfway down into the depths of the hole. There were further rudimentary paths leading down, to the left, right, and ahead of her, but they would not be as easy to negotiate. Debris littered the landscape, the tops of buildings jutting out of rubble and sand. She noted at least six or seven possible ways into the wreckage before her, through tunnels of grey and brown. She wasn't about to risk life and limb investigating further. Whatever it was that came and went here, it knew the landscape well, the safe spots. It - or they - undoubtedly lived here.

Stopping to listen and get a feel for the atmosphere, Faith paused close to the twisted metal of an old truck, its glass and tires long gone. She yanked at the ripped and beaten seat hanging half in and half out of the driver's side door, placing it up against a pile of stone when it finally broke free.

She contemplated pulling out her pack of cigs from the small rucksack she had with her, but shook her head with a chuckle. She'd promised Dawn she would quit, and she wasn't about to let the kid down. Not that they spoke often, but when they did Dawn made her feel like she wasn't quite as alone as she believed. No matter where in the world she was when they talked, Dawn always made her feel a little closer to home. Though 'home' wasn't a concept Faith had much experience with, Dawn insisted it was with them and tirelessly tried to convince Faith she was needed and wanted amongst the rest of the gang.

Faith doubted many other people shared that view, but she answered every time Dawn called, and she hoped - though silently and secretly - that the calls would keep coming. It was nice having allies, and she was fairly certain she could count on Giles and Dawn to stand in her corner these days. She didn't exactly know why Dawn had begun to champion her, but she had reluctantly come to accept it over time.

What Buffy thought of the contact between Faith and Dawn was unknown. Faith had barely seen Buffy since Sunnydale, and she had no reason to speak with her directly. What little they knew of each other's lives now came through rumours and conversations with other people. Slayers would tell her that Buffy tried not to have anything to do with running the training centres, leaving decisions to an appointed few.

Things seemed to be working ok, however, so Faith saw no reason to worry or get involved. Buffy more than deserved to have her life back, a future, some semblance of normality.

Kicking her feet out in front of her, Faith settled back on the battered car seat and let the slayer instincts within her rise to the surface. She listened, filtering the night noises until the area around her became clear in her mind; a map of silent places littered with possible threats, and obvious ones. She knew there were small animals and rodents hunting, making homes, living out their existence in the mess below. She knew there was something larger pushing its way through hidden tunnels and dangerous ruins of what once stood - probably a wandering mountain lion, prowling for prey.

She also knew there was something else out there, further down, further hidden, into the darkness she couldn't see past. Something below the buildings, the sand, below Sunnydale. Her skin prickled as she focused on it, on the sounds she didn't hear so much as feel. Xander called this ability a slayer's 'spidey sense'. She guessed it was a demon but she couldn't tell what type, or how big it might be. It seemed to be alone, but that didn't mean it would remain alone. There could be more of them further down, or too far away for her to feel.

There was no point in hunting for it at this point so she sat and waited, watching the shadows shift as the moon drifted through the night sky.

Some time later, she felt the presence of something else, different to the demon she'd clocked earlier. Bigger, moving quickly and toward her. Faith stood up, stretched her back with a sigh and placed her fingers around the handle of a large knife strapped to her thigh, loosening the leather tie that kept it in place. There was a small, curved axe holstered on her hip, and a dagger attached to the top of her boot. She needed nothing more to feel secure, capable of defence, or attack if needs be.

Her shoulders tightened as the sounds of shifting rubble came from ahead. Grunting preceded each scrape and stumble of whatever it was that was emerging into the night. It was losing speed, but still coming, so Faith flicked her gaze left and right, spotting a mound of twisted metal she could hide herself behind.

Moving silently, she hoisted herself behind the rusting remains of something vaguely motorbike shaped. Her breath coming quicker, her muscles ready for action, she watched as large, meaty hands grabbed the sides of a misshapen doorway. Heaving a mass of a bright blue body through the partially buried doorframe, the demon drew a slippery tongue over its snarling lips and broke into the moonlight.

She watched as it blinked up at the sky. She'd never seen this particular type of demon before. It was huge, skin shimmering in the muted light as its muscles rippled with every small movement. It didn't look particularly sharp minded, its mouth dropping open to taste the air as large feet left frighteningly deep hollows in the earth with every step. But Faith wasn't frightened, just curious. Size didn't mean much when it came to slaying. The larger the demon, the bigger the swing you had to take when plunging your knife into its gullet, but aside from that they all died soon enough at the hands of a slayer.

Sliding her knife free of its harness as quietly as possible, she pondered the possibility that this demon might be of the friendly persuasion. She knew a fair few of those after all - vampires too of course - but there was no way to know for sure. Not keen on the idea of stepping up to the guy and offering pleasant greetings, Faith had no choice but to guess he was stumbling out of the recently closed hellmouth in order to snack on unsuspecting travellers. He certainly looked hungry enough if the drool dribbling from the side of his mouth was any indication.

With a sniff of the air in her direction any further guessing games were put on hold as the demon cocked its head and shuffled closer.

His garbled, drool spattered murmurs were unintelligible, but his purpose was clear. The demon had caught the scent of something snack worthy and was intent on discovering just where that snack was hiding.

"I coulda swore I'd put deodorant on this morning," Faith said to herself, eyeing the demon fangs glistening with saliva as he sniffed her out.

Waiting until the last moment, when he was close enough for Faith to catch the heavy stench of his breath, but not close enough to find herself gripped within thick fingers, she pounced from behind the tangle of metal.

Landing to the demon's right, she clutched her knife in front of her and opened her mouth to warn him of his imminent demise. She shut it quickly as he moved faster than any hulking blue mountain of ugly should be able to.

"Glurp!" he boomed as his fingers grazed the dark leather of Faith's jacket.

She tumbled to the left, deftly avoiding his grasp. "So it's gonna be like that, huh?" she said, watching his feet for any more sudden movements. "Foe, not friend then."

Feinting to the right, she spun with inhuman speed and slashed out at him as he made his own move. The knife didn't strike skin, but that wasn't her purpose just yet. She was testing him, preparing to have to wear the guy down bit by bit before going in for the kill. Though she'd never met this kind of demon before, she'd danced this dance with many others similar enough to keep her wits sharp.

He grunted and swung his arm towards her, feet moving across the dry earth in a way that defied his mass. Intrigued, Faith kept him moving, swinging, striking out at her as he grew ever more frustrated and angry. Spit flew from his snarling mouth and she did everything to avoid being hit by its gloopy mess. Pretty soon the ground was slippery with it.

A few closer swipes of Faith's knife and the ground began to churn up with both saliva and dark blue blood. She grimaced as she noticed her boots were being covered in goop and sand, and all that she was shuffling amongst in between the debris strewn around.

"Ok, enough fuckin' around, big guy," she grunted as she jumped to avoid the majority of his body as he charged at her.

His trailing leg caught her shin and she was forced to roll back to her feet as the ground moved out from under her. She was momentarily facing away from him, back exposed. Not a good position and he took advantage.

With an 'oof' she hit the dirt again, her knife breaking free of her grip. More than grateful to miss the puddles of body fluid further up the hill, and more winded than hurt, Faith grabbed at her knife to retrieve it. The warm steel slid snugly into her palm and she twisted around, just in time to scramble sideways, out of the way of a stomping foot.

"Blurvble!" he spat.

The ground shook, dust flew up, and Faith decided he actually really needed to die now.

"Took the words right outta my mouth," Faith quipped.

Wiping the sweat beginning to bead at her brow, Faith narrowed her eyes and waited for him to lunge again, his energy seemingly inexhaustible. Her fingers twitched around the knife, blood flowing fast through her veins as the slaying instinct washed over her. She immersed herself in the need to kill, to end this demon's life and fulfil her duty. The feeling made her giddy with expectation.

Just as she was about to thrust towards his heart the demon's gaze shifted to her right. Something had distracted him but Faith would have to worry about whatever was behind her after she'd completed this kill. The moment had to be seized before it . . .

"Hi," a chirpy voice said beside her, almost making Faith jump out of her skin. "Mind if I borrow this?"

The axe at Faith's thigh was swiftly plucked from its harness by slim fingers, the shiny steel of its sharp blade sparkling in the moonlight as it whirled at the demon. It hit dead centre, deeply.

"Glurfblurv!" the demon wailed, blood spurting from his mouth as he tried in vain to yank the axe from his chest.

Further possible expletives littered the tense atmosphere as he slumped to the floor, taking his last breath full of dust and sand. Faith took her own trembling breath, failing to calm the unfocused storm inside as she tipped her head to the left and glared at the diminutive blonde slayer stood grinning beside her.



TBC...