“Nash, Pearl. Deal with this. I’ve got to focus on the big picture.”

Whistler doesn’t even look at his hench demons whilst he orders them. He doesn’t look at Angel and Faith either, who both dive into the fray with intensity. Pearl is silenced by an arrow to the throat before Faith even lands on the roof! Whistler powers up his hands with blue energy, continuing with his plans around the burning magical artifacts. He doesn’t have time for this.

Faith kicks Pearl in her stomach, her eyebeams missing the Slayer’s head by inches. Angel swings a mace, which strikes Nash in the side of the head. He screams in pain as Angel looks over at Whistler. He yells at his former mentor to stop what he’s doing: billions of people are about to die!

“Easily distracted, aren’t you? I don’t have a stake on me. But decapitation, I can do.” Nash grabs a hold of Angel’s wrist, stopping a swing mid-strike. His other hand closes around Angel’s throat. Whistler looks over at them. He begs Angel to listen to reason.

“Last time, Angel. I’m not here to destroy the world. I’m here to save it.”

As Pearl pulls the arrow out from her neck, she twirls and plunges it straight into Faith’s leg, catching her off guard. She taunts her. “It’s already too late, dear. This world will evolve, kicking and screaming. We’ve won.”

“Not…” Faith rolls with the pain, puts her weight on her other foot and headbutts Pearl! Her next target is Whistler, and she fires her crossbow as soon as she has a lock.

“….Yet!” The arrow slices through the air, close enough to Whistler to take off his hat.

“Damn it, keep them back!” He roars. He pulls himself back up off the roof and in the centre of his hands there’s now a blue spherical orb which is building and building in intensity. He looks around and shakes his head, muttering under his breath now.

“I’m trying to distil magic into it’s purest form. One wrong move and London’s a smoking crater.” He turns the orb in his hands, without touching it, moulding it into what he needs. It seems to stabilise and he exhales out. He’d been holding his breath and hadn’t realised. He looks up at Pearl, who’s struggling with Faith. She asks him to help.

“Sure. Just give me a second to catch my breath.” He looks over at Nash and Angel, evenly-matched. Outnumbered though, which will give Whistler an edge. He smiles.

“Or not.”

The sudden words come from the mouth of Nadira Kureishi, the Vampire Slayer, who suddenly appears, leaping onto the rooftop from seemingly nowhere. Her sword slices straight through Nash’s back with a sickening squelch, causing the demon to scream in agony. A broad smile on her face, Nadira turns to Angel and tells him to move.

“Shut this down, Angel. I’ve got Albino Bowie.” Faith hears the familiar voice and turns in shock, blocking Pearl’s blow as she calls to her former student to get the hell out of there!

Nadira decides otherwise. She knees Nash between his legs and then proceeds to beat on him, punctuating her blows with her words. “Not a chance. I’m a Slayer! To stand against the forces of darkness! To stop the spread of their evil!”

“This is why I’m here!” Nash is at her feet now, her sword ready for a killing blow.

On the other side of the roof top, Angel has finally reached Whistler, sword in hands. “Give me the plague,” he demands.

Whistler sneers at him. “That’s a nasty word for something that’s going to save the planet.”

“By murdering half of it.” Angel is blunt and straight to the point, but Whistler continues to mock him.

“A third. I know, math’s hard.”

Angel makes sure his old friend can see the weapons in his hands, the mace ready to swing. “Whistler, I don’t want to kill you.”

Whistler places the orb down for a moment, on a chimney stack to his right. He looks straight in Angel’s eyes, determination and anger written in his stare. “Took the words outta my mouth. I think you’re forgetting who wiped the floor with who last time.”

Angel reminds Whistler that the distilling process has taken too much out of him. Whistler smiles and grins at that.

“Sure. But not near enough. My dad was an agent of the Powers That Be. Good-looking guy. I had a mom, too. Pureblood demon. I also take after her.” He straightens himself up, his eyes now jet black.

As his words continue, his skin changes colour. His clothes are shredded. He seems to be completely encompassed in flame, bright blue now. It’s the only colour that can be seen in this new form. He’s taller, and now has curved horns protruding back from his head. His head which is also surrounded by that same burning blue.

“From the day I met you, I knew. We’d save the world together or one of us would kill the other.”

He fires a strong blast of orange flame from his hands, straight at Angel, who only narrowly jumps out of the way. “Sorry it had to be this.”

As Nash rolls out from Nadira’s blow, she screams in rage. Faith, busy blocking Pearl’s every move is distracted, looking back at Nadira, keeping an eye on her progress.

Look at her. Nothing there but hate.

Nash gets up and floats, kicking Nadira in the head and forcing her back. “That’s vintage, you guttersnipe!”

I was supposed to be helping her.

“Bastard!” Nadira yells at Nash in annoyance as he fires those hideous green beams at her from his eyes.

Give her something to live for.

Nadira uses her sword as Faith watches, catches the eyebeams in the blade’s reflection, redirecting it from her path. “Die!”

But she rejected all the good in her life. All she’s got left is this.

Nadira gets past Nash’s defences, holds the blade to his throat and looks him straight in the eyes. She yells defiantly, spit spraying from her mouth. “DIE!”

Just like her teacher. Faith realises that the distraction has cost her, as Pearl’s latest blow causes her to drop her axe. She zigs backward, grabbing Pearl by the throat, but never loses sight of her former… no, current student. She makes her mind up there and then.

No. It’s not too late. I won’t let it be. “Nadira, don’t! Fight smart!”

Pearl grins and takes advantage, kicking Faith in the stomach. “Sound advice. Paying attention’s a good start.” Faith staggers slightly and Pearl flips around, holding Faith secure by her neck from behind and realising that there’s a personal thing at play here.

“This sorry little girl is your protégé? I’d imagine you’ve invested a lot in her. Oh, brother dear… Teach Faith a lesson in loss.”

“No!” Faith struggles in Pearl’s arms, desperately clawing at her assailant, desperate to get to Nadira.

“Yes! Hate can make you strong girl. It can also make you careless.” Nash is too close and his hands burn with that fierce unnatural glow. Nadira is hit and backs off slightly, swinging her blade. Unfortunately, the demon avoids it using his powers. Faith yells at her, another warning, but this one comes too late.

Pearl holds her face straight at Nadira as the blast hits her straight in her torso. She yells Nadira’s voice as she’s hit and falls to the floor. The smell is awful as Faith looks straight at Nadira. Half of her body, on her left side, is simply gone, a mass of burns and smoke and red where her face was.

Elsewhere, depending on traffic, the group of the Fairweather sisters, Alasdair Coames and Rupert Giles, are trying to reach Hackney. Sophie yells at her sister from the back seat: “Faster Lavinia. We’ll miss it!”

Giles turns to his aunt, trying to prevent yet another bickering match. “One does not ‘miss’ an apocalypse, Aunt Sophie. One prevents it or dies in it.”

“Well, Rupert, dear, just because someone is a hundred years old, she does not need to drive like it.”

Lavinia tuts and sighs. “Perhaps I’d be in more of a hurry if I had any faith in the sad little trinkets Alasdair gave us. Rune stones? Really?”

Alasdair brushes off the sarcasm in her voice. “They’ll protect us against the magic plague and offer a mild defence against direct attacks. But I do wish I hadn’t lost all my offensive artifacts.”

Giles puts his smaller hand on his friend’s shoulder, reassuringly. “Perhaps we won’t need them, Alasdair. Do you feel that? The taste of ozone and jasmine. The tickle in your cerebellum.” He looks out of the window and, as soon as the car stops, Giles can see the green and blue energies, bouncing off the roof and onto the tarmac in front of them.

“There’s magic in the air.”

Alasdair looks up, pain in his voice. “They would be on a bloody rooftop. My knees have been giving me fits.”

Sophie already has the back of the car open and is gathering the weapons they’ve brought as back up. “Rest yourself, old man. We’ll take the extra weapons up.”

“Really? I hadn’t pegged you two for the type to get your hands dirty.”

“Just because we choose our fights a bit more judiciously than some in our family, doesn’t make us cowards. We’d prefer the world not to end too, you know.” With that Sophie links arms with her sister and they head for the building and the staircase that will take them to battle. They don’t look back.

Giles watches them go and then exhales. He turns back to Alasdair, smile on his face. “All the better. I need you in a more familiar role. One no one’s played in some time.”

He hands Alasdair one of the books he has brought with them. “I’d thought this the longest of long shots, but feeling that energy, I’d say the odds are at least even. Shall we attempt to cast a spell or two?” Alasdair takes the book with a smile, and nods.

Back above the rooftop, Pearl still has Faith in her grip, taunting her about the now fallen Nadira. “Listen to that sizzle. Always happens with the hippy girls.”

“Bitch! I will kill you!”

Nash comes towards them, his eyes still powered up. “Hold her Pearl. I’ll fuse that sassy mouth shut!”

Suddenly, they’re interrupted by Whistler, who has just put his fist through the roof. He misses Angel, who avoids his blow with ease. “No! Priorities!”

He snarls in frustration now. “We need the energy in the upper atmosphere when it blows! Maximum dispersal!

Nash ignores Faith for a moment and turns. He picks up the blue shiny orb from where Whistler had placed it. “You’re right. Try to keep one of them alive for me. I do hate to miss a kill.” He takes the orb in his hands and floats up into the air, away from the battle, higher and higher. Angel throws his blade after the demon, hoping to stop him, but a flame blast chars the weapon to dust.

Whistler looks at Angel, no mocking this time. He’s serious. “It’s over, man. I’m finally gonna finish what we started.”

Angel is not finished however, always unwilling to give up. “What we started, was to help people.” He grabs a hold of Whistler by his horns and throws him back into a brick chimney, nearly shattering it.

“That’s why I couldn’t go through with it, once I saw what was happening. I wanted to save people. Not murder them.”

Whistler back hands Angel, drawing blood from his mouth. “Sometimes, it’s the same thing. Just a question of which people,” he snarls. He stands over the fallen vampire, now on the floor, wiping the blood from his mouth.

“That’s your problem, Angel. That’s why you ruined this when the body count coulda stayed in the millions. You always think there’s a way around the hard choices.” He picks Angel up by the throat, his other fist charged with that blue flame.

“Sometimes there ain’t. Sometimes you gotta hurt folks you really don’t wanna.”

Suddenly, before Whistler can strike, Lavinia and Sophie exit from the rooftop access. Lavinia scans around her and yells at the vampire, throwing the blade like she’s done it before. “Angel! Catch!”

As Angel catches the blade, Sophie also throws a weapon, this one a mace. It lands just out of Faith’s reach, much to Sophie’s alarm. Faith shakes her head and plunges Pearl over her shoulder and down onto the mace. “Close enough.”

Rushing back to the cover of the access, the sisters close the door, leaving a gap to peer at the battle through. Sophie is full of pride. “Well, I’d say we’ve done our part, wouldn’t you?”

“Above and beyond, I think.” Lavinia nods. A blast hits the door, which they take as their cue to close it.

Angel is still fighting, not surrendering, slicing the hand holding him from the arm it’s attached to. Whistler screams, but Angel’s thoughts are elsewhere. “None of this matters! We have to stop Nash!”

Whistler takes advantage of Angel’s orders, throwing a blast at Angel’s back with his remaining hands. “Good luck. Last I checked, everyone who can fly is on my team.”

Angel looks over at Faith, who has left Pearl on the ground. She kicks Whistler in the back, sending him tumbling to the ground in surprise. “I got your back, Angel. Don’t miss!”

Angel looks up at Nash and takes the blade in his hand. He prepares to throw it, javelin-like at the demon. As it leaves his grip and flies through the air, it seems to be heading straight for it’s target, but Nash doesn’t even look at the blade as he carelessly bats it away.

The sword falls back to the roof, hitting with a clang. Both Whistler and Angel look at the sword for a moment. Angel has no idea what else to do. Whistler looks glum in mock deference. “Fighting to the end. I like that. But it is the end.”

On the street below, Alasdair has managed to conjure up a few slight sparkles from his hands, but they dissipate. He curses under his breath and looks at Giles with sorrow. “There’s energy, but it’s too wild. It won’t be controlled.”

Giles looks down at his book, flicks through a few pages and back again. “Then let’s not force it any more than we have to. If we can’t outright control it, perhaps we can lure it in…”

He finds what he was looking for and a ball of flame comes from his hand. It glows with intensity and power. Alasdair is surprised, but Giles, before he can say anything, flings it in the direction of Nash in the sky. “…And nudge it in the right direction.”

His blast flashes through the air towards the demon. Giles closes his eyes for a moment, praying in a whisper. “Please.”

As everyone watches, Rupert Giles’s blast hurtles and hits Nash. Injured, he drops the orb which begins to fall through the air, back towards the ground. Angel and Faith both race for it, attempting to catch it. Whistler tackles Faith to stop her, and Pearl, still healing, tries to grab the glowing sphere. She misses and it cascades down, off the roof and over the crowd, spreading it’s blue sparkles from itself like snow.

Caught in the sprinkle, one civilian asks what it is. Another, thinks it’s lovely, compares it to fairy dust.

And then someone in the crowd screams in pain. Then another gasp of shock. One young man melts into goo. One grows tentacles from his mouth. One is transformed into a white-haired beast. Some catch fire. Some grow wings. Some shed their skin like snakes. Humans are being transformed, violently now, the whole crowd, into new creatures, reacting to the magic now being littered upon them.

As the crowd screams and the noise spreads, Faith and Angel look down in horror as sirens begin in the distance and screams fill the eerie London night.

Pearl and Nash hover over the crowd, watching as more and more people change into all manner of demons, creatures and monsters. Pearl looks at her brother, broad smile punctuating her words, voiced with an almost reverence.

“The future. It’s finally here. First, Hackney. Soon the world…”