As Pearl and Nash float back down towards the roof-top, screams fill the night air above London. Sirens wail, explosions rock buildings and creatures stumble in the streets, humans becoming monsters, the plague spreading. The demon twins look particularly pleased. “Look, Pearl. It’s finally happening.” His sister nods in agreement. “It’s beautiful.”

Angel cannot believe what he’s seeing. He stares down and looks over at Whistler. “What did you do, you sick…”

Whistler stares out at the ensuing chaos below him. Angel asks him again. “What did you do?” Whistler stares below, but says nothing. He watches.

Then, without warning, he trips Angel up, Faith‘s warning coming too late. He watches as the orb is kicked about, lost on the streets in the throes of the panicking crowd. Still glowing, still charging, still getting ready to detonate.

“Nash, get the orb. It’s down there somewhere. Building to critical mass. We want this happening globally, not just here.” He fires a fire blast at Angel and Faith, who both instinctively dive out of his path.

Pearl and Nash have already taken to the air, heading for the ground. “Understood. We’ll get it to the upper atmosphere. Don’t worry.”

Angel spots their movements and turns to Faith. “I’ll take Whistler, you need to get the orb.” Faith shakes her head. “He’ll kill you.” But it’s useless, she can already tell, simply by looking at the vampire’s face. “Go,” he commands, and Faith doesn’t need telling again.

She bounces off the roof without hesitation, closing the gap between her and Nash in an instant. She calls him out and swings her mace, which strikes him violently in the back of the head. “Hey. This is for Nadira, you son of a…”

Pearl fires her eyebeams at Faith, which scrape past her shoulder, throwing her off Nash and down towards the ground below. “Off my brother!” She picks Nash up, green energy swirling and crackling around her like lightening as she rages at her brother’s injuries. “Help me find her, the little hussy. I’ll charbroil her.”

Her brother stops her for a moment, breathing in deeply. He pulls her close to him and gestures at the chaos below. “Pearl, do you see? Do you know what this means?” he asks, with awe. “It’s what Mama wanted. What we’ve worked so hard for. After all this time, we’ve won.”

Taking refuge in a nearby store, Alasdair and Rupert Giles guide a young woman, who’s grown butterfly wings from her back, inside. “What’s happening? What’s happened to me?” the woman asks and Giles does his best to calm her.

“It’s a magic plague. I know, it’s a shock, but you need to take cover.”

“My boyfriend, he was just here…”

“We’ll keep an eye out for him, dear.” Alasdair looks around the store. There’s nobody else present. But then the chime above the door rings, and the Fairweather sisters, looking flustered, rush through the entrance.

“It’s all gone pear-shaped out there.” Sophie gestures outside, her pig-tails swinging in her panic. Lavinia turns to her nephew .

“The baddies dropped some glowy disco ball and, well, you’ve seen what happened.”

Giles looks at the woman with the wings, now sat in a chair, quietly sobbing. “All that mystic energy, distilled into so small a space… That sort of power can’t be contained for long.”

Alasdair raises his voice slightly, exasperation and frustration starting to flare. “Clearly, it’s not. It’s leaking out and transforming these poor people. We have to help them. Rupert?”

Giles, much to Alasdair’s surprise, shakes his head. “No. We need to find the sphere, or it won’t matter. The energy will grow and eventually release.”

Sophie sighs and lifts one hand in the air. “Perhaps that’s all to the good. The baddies want it in the sky when that happens. If it explodes here what more damage can it do?” Her nephew looks up at her, with deadly seriousness.

“Wipe England off the map for starters.”

“Right. Find the glowy disco ball. Got it.” That convinces Sophie.

Lavinia speaks up next. “Hang on. Not to be ‘that girl’ but I’m not keen to melt into goo, or worse, grow a horse’s arse.” She looks at her sister, who’s about to say something. She points at her in warning. “Not a word, Sophie.”

Giles again shakes his head. “If that were going to happen, it would have. The rune stones Alasdair gave us are clearly protecting us… for the moment. So move. Alasdair, we’ll head west.” Alastair looks for a moment at the young girl, inconsolable on the chair. He hesitantly follows Giles out of the store, looking back at her as he leaves. “Yes. Yes of course.”

On the rooftop, Whistler and Angel are trading blows, evenly matched in speed and strength. Whistler continues to beg Angel to stop, telling him there’s no point to their fighting. “Stop fighting Angel. I’m finishing what you didn’t. What you didn’t have the cojones to do. This has to happen. It’s for the best.” He punches Angel to his knees on the rooftop.

“Yeah?” Angel rises yet again, and Whistler almost looks shocked at the vampire’s insistent survival. But Angel kicks at the demon, throwing him backwards and leaping over him. “If you’re so proud of yourself, why won’t you look at it?”

He grabs a hold of Whistler by his two horns and directs his face down into the crowd. He holds Whistler’s head in place, forcing him to witness the fallout of his plan. “Look.”

A man on the street is screaming. His guitar has merged with his skin. “You did this.”

“You talk about evolution. Necessary losses. But you’re talking about people. That’s why I couldn’t finish our plan. Buffy showed me the cost.” A boy calls for his mother, spider legs unfurling from his back. His mother shouts at him to leave her side – she’s engulfed in living flame.

Five men have been dragged together, their flesh now a mound of eye balls, limbs and mouths. “There’s got to be a better way.”

Angel continues to hold Whistler in place, but he still doesn’t speak. “I know that the loss of magic affected your mind. You’re all about balance, and yours was thrown off. But you’re not like Pearl and Nash. You cared about people. I believe you still do. Maybe the planet does need magic, but are you really willing to do this to the whole world?”

“I have to!” Whistler closes his eyes, tries not to look. But then he breaks free when Angel releases him slightly and he swings his remaining fist in the vampire’s direction. “You think I’m enjoying this? It’s the way things have to be! Earth’s gonna die without magic. There’s no other way to save it!”

“Really? It hasn’t been that long since magic ended. You’ve tried everything? Or is this really because you’re hurting and you want it to stop? Is all this death because you need a fix?” Angel keeps on returning Whistler’s blows, but now the demon is stronger, rage powering his strength. But Angel dodges every blow and continues to tell Whistler that he’s wrong.

“This isn’t about you. Or me. I’m not letting you do this, Whistler.” As Whistler prepares another blow, he miscalculates, falls through a fragile part of the roof, temporarily stuck. As he struggles to free himself, he shouts after Angel and, within moments, has ripped himself free and once again pursues the vampire. “Come back, damn it. You won’t ruin this too!”

As he leaps after Angel, he doesn’t notice Nadira‘s arm, moving slightly, a weak voice guiding it’s actions. “Not… finished… yet…”

Below, Nash’s eyebeams almost hit his sister as Faith bounces back and forth between them, striking with her mace and slamming Pearl in the shoulder. “Nadira was right! I should have been after you scumbags from the start. Not gonna take my eyes off the ball again.”

Brushing off Faith’s blows, the pair seek advantage over the Slayer in the air. Pearl grins and spits at Faith. “Good. Because it’s really long past time we wiped you off the face of the Earth.”

Emerging from the store and seeing the chaos on the streets, Lavinia is appalled. “Bloody Hell. It’s the Blitz all over again.” She catches herself and turns to her sister. “Oh, Sophie sweetie, I didn’t mean to…”

Sophie breathes deeply and exhales with defiance in her throat. “No. You’re right. It’s just like that. The elite play their power games, fight over the right to shape the world in their image. Catch the rest of us up in their madness. It never changes, does it?”

There is silence between them for a moment, the reality hitting them. Sophie scans the floor and the surrounding area. “I can’t see that ridiculous shiny thing anywhere. Do you?”

“No, and frankly, it’s not as if we can stop the others from taking it. What I do see is an awful lot of people who need help. With magic – something we know a good deal about.”

Lavinia watches as her sister shrugs and then looks directly at the crowd. “Right. If we see the ball anywhere, we speed-dial Rupert. Until then, we try to actually do some good in all this horrible business.” The sisters give each other a look and walk in opposite directions.

Lavinia bends to approach a young woman, crackling with electricity. “Listen to me, love. If you haven’t burnt to death by now, there’s rather a good chance you can turn that off. Just breathe deep. Remember, you’re English. No one does repression like us.”

Sophie straddles up to a wolf-like individual and smiles. “Well, hello, aren’t you a handsome creature?”

The creature looks at her, his human voice sounding desperate and devastated. He’s a monster, he declares loudly. Sophie approaches him and softens her tone. “Oh, darling, please. You’ll be the star of the Furry Conventions…”

Whistler for a moment has stopped fighting. He’s looking at the crowd, watching the changes as they spread. Angel speaks from behind him, still reasoning, still trying to get through to his old friend. “Worse than you thought, isn’t it? That’s what changed my mind when I was Twilight. When Buffy showed me what was happening. What it really meant.”

Whistler turns in anger and seizes Angel by his throat. “You think I’ve never seen anything like this? I was in Hiroshima, dumbass.” He throws him back into the nearest wall, which crumbles under the force of the blow.

“I saw people pulling off burning clothes and taking their skin with it! I stepped on black crumbling things that used to be babies! It was bad, but more would’ve died in an invasion of Japan!” He leaves Angel in a heap on the inside of the wall and turns his back.

He doesn’t look back at Angel as he walks towards the crowd. “This is the only way,” he says to himself and then repeats it again, quietly, trying to convince himself. “The only way.”

As he turns a corner, he’s stunned by what he sees. Faith is cornered, trapped against a car, barely shielding herself from an onslaught of repeated blows from both Pearl and Nash. He looks at them, puzzled. “What the Hell?”

“Ah, Whistler. We’ll be done in a moment.”

Whistler opens his mouth in rage and screams at the pair. “You freakin idiots! Where is the orb?”

“Here’s something I hadn’t thought of Rupert. Now that we have it, what do we do with it?”

As Alasdair Coames and Rupert Giles run as fast as they can in the opposite direction, Giles desperately tries not to drop the temperamental orb that’s pulsating in his hands. “It’s energy must be released in controlled fashion. Even given our experience with magic and the protective rune stones, there’s great risk manipulating such forces. You should take cover Alasdair.”

Alasdair considers for a moment and then shakes his head, turning to his friend. “Let me Rupert. You have just been resurrected and have a whole entire life ahead of you. I’m old. I’ve lived longer than I ever expected.”

“You’re not much older than me. Don’t feel you have to…” Giles stops talking. He knows what Alasdair wants. He wants something for himself, just like him. “We’re after the same thing, aren’t we?”

Alasdair lowers his head, ashamed. “I’m useless without magic, just a doddering old fool. If I can regain even a measure of my old power…”

“Or you could die! Like all those poor people…”

“Yes, but given my experience with such energies, I like my odds. And I’m willing to take the chance. But you, you’re young again! Why?”

Giles almost starts to shout, but realises and calms himself. “Why? Look at me! At least your life, your legacy, is still your own. I’m no good to anyone like this!” He gestures down at his teenage form. “I feel like I’m going mad.”

He looks up, as if considering other options. He turns to Alasdair. “You know, if we did it together, it might improve both our chances of survival…”

Alasdair nods, but is already reaching into his shirt pocket. “This is an appallingly bad idea, isn’t it…?”

“Bordering on insane,” Giles tells him, orb in one hand, and dropping his rune stone to the ground, where it joins Alasdair’s with a clunk. Giles smiles. He holds out the orb and Alasdair also places his hands on the sphere. He then begins to chant.

“Eximo…”

A voice from above, full of cockiness and immaturity, stops the spell.

Nash stares down at them both, grinning wildly. “There you are! Thought I’d lost you!” He fires his green beams at Alasdair and Giles, but they both manage to stumble out of the way. “Luckily for me, you stood around nattering.” Nash hovers down and picks up the orb from where Giles has dropped it. He grins again before taking the orb back into the air.

Angel sees him with the orb while throwing a post-box at Whistler. He yells at Faith who looks up. She tells him that she’s trying, but she’s busy with Pearl.

Nash flies past her, taunting her as he goes and holding the orb high, the glow now almost blinding from inside it. “And failing.”

Elsewhere, a weak voice tries to speak words, pulling something from a leather pouch. “Never stop!”

With that, Nadira uses the last of her strength to throw her burned body up into the air for one final attempt to help. “Never give up!” she screams, as the dagger she unsheathed glints in the moonlight.

Nash is too slow to turn. Nadira’s blade plunges into Nash’s back and he screams, falling down, barely able to keep himself aloft. “Not… quite good enough!” He turns to Nadira and, although weakened, has just enough strength to throw the injured Slayer into the nearest building. Faith yells after her.

“No!” She leaps through the air, hitting Pearl with the mace as she leaves the ground. She swings the weapon around and taps it against the blade sticking from Nash’s back. It’s pushed further into his spine by the hit, and Nash, looking surprised, just stops and falls to the ground, dead.

As Pearl screams her brother’s name, green lightning crackles from his corpse and streaks across the air straight into Pearl’s body. She cries in agony and propels herself from the ground and into the air with a demonic scream. By the time Faith looks up from the ground, Pearl is gone. She turns, exhausted, but sees Nadira on the ground, Nash’s body on one side of her, the glowing orb pulsating in her face.

Faith picks up the orb and cradles her student in her hands. She holds the orb close to Nadira, willing it to do something, although she has no clue what. “Hang on. This… maybe it can fix you…”

Giles approaches slowly and calls her name. Faith looks up at him, tears threatening to fall. “I’m afraid it didn’t work for us. And trying nearly led to disaster.”

Faith looks down at Nadira and lets the tears flow. Giles reassures her and holds out his hand. “I’m sorry, Faith. But it’s reaching the point of no return, and we have no time to waste.”

She hands him the orb, but doesn’t look at him this time. “Yeah. Do what you gotta do.”

Suddenly, a growl from behind them. “That’s all I’ve ever done, kiddo!”

Whistler comes from nowhere, tackling the orb away from Faith’s grasp. He sends both Slayer and Watcher scattered to one side, laughing in their faces. “It’s about to blow. And you took out all my flyers. So I gotta improvise.” He turns to the sky, raising his arm back, preparing to hurl it with his demon strength as far into the sky as he can.

“Me too.”

As Whistler goes to throw, Angel comes out of the smoke and grabs his mentor’s arm. He looks him straight in the eyes and snarls at Whistler.

“You always said it’s the big moments that show who you are. Let’s find out.”