Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 5 - LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

He raised his son in the English way
And he taught him respect, he taught him how to pray
He sent him off to boarding school
Where he learned how to live by someone else's rules...

... It must be something much deeper than fear or pain
Another child learns the pattern, he won't break the chain

Fear of God and the feel of the rod will raise a good boy
The fear of God and the feel of the rod will raise a good boy
The fear of God and the feel of the rod will raise the next boy


(Rick Springfield Album - Living in Oz)




Chapter 5.12
Saturday, June 15th, 2002


Spike rapidly dismissed the idea of using the bottle in his inside pocket. Their attackers were already too close and the tunnels too unstable to risk the fire spreading. His hand reached into his jeans, clasping what he thought of as their 'lucky charm', slipping it between his fingers before he tightened his grip on his axe handle. He dashed to intercept the two Turok Han who were approaching from the rear before they could break free of the tunnel mouth. He couldn't allow them the room to come at him from more than one side or access to the weapons in the armoury.

 

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Buffy took a millisecond to debate whether she should stay at his back or block the third ubervamp from the room. Reluctantly, she admitted that the best way to help her vampire was to take out her opponent before he could get to Spike. That meant taking the fight to him. Inside the tunnel, she kept her sword moving in defensive arcs, trying to keep the vamp at a distance. With her off hand, she crushed all the remaining glow sticks in the pocket on that side, throwing them at her attacker's face before they bounced to the tunnel's floor. The deformed beast snarled at the sudden relative brightness, and raised an arm to cover its eyes. Though Buffy had been more concerned with ensuring that she could adequately see her attacker than trying to dazzle it, she used the chance to slash open its forearm.

 

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So far as Spike was concerned he had three advantages in this fight. He had the weaponry, he had the brains and he had the moves. They had numbers, they had strength and they probably had better pain resistance. He just hoped he had enough.

He used the momentum of his run up to throw himself into a forward roll, swinging out with his axe at the nearer of the two targets as he rose to his feet again. His intended victim neatly jumped clear of the swipe and its companion at arms almost managed a raking blow against Spike's back. Its claws were only millimetres short of slashing open the brand new leather.

"Mind the bloody coat, you half-decomposed bastard!" the blond snarled in annoyance.

'Don't try to play the hero, Spike. You just need to stay in one piece and keep them busy until I can get rid of this one and we can get them two on two.' She tried not to broadcast the thought that the last time they had met one of these they'd been struggling even when they were able to double team it.

Her words coincided with the crunch of metal shattering bone, the head of Spike's axe slicing through the arm that had threatened his apparel, and the blade embedding itself deeply into the tunnel's earthen wall.

'Oh bugger!' was the blond's only response as, after a quick and ineffective tug, he gave the weapon up as lost, dropping into a defensive stance and edging back away from his adversaries. He was especially careful of the one that should in any reasonable universe be falling back and licking its wounds. This, Spike thought as the beast charged, was obviously no reasonable universe.

 

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Buffy continued on the defensive, her encounter with the Turok Han at the high school construction site making her wary of over-extending herself. Just as she was getting the measure of her opponent's style and looking to capitalise, she 'saw' the one-handed ubervamp lunge toward Spike. In one seamless move she pirouetted into a spin kick. Her left hand reached behind her, pulling out one of the pieces of broom handle. Her off-handed throw sent it tumbling end over end toward the fight on the far side of the room. Before it could meet its mark, she had spun full circle. Strong fingers gripped her ankle, preventing her foot from impacting with her adversary's head. The ubervamp used his hold to push her roughly into the tunnel wall, bruising both her shoulder and the back of her head. She landed in an ungainly heap, but quickly managed to roll away from the Turok Han's questing talons and back to her feet, keeping her grip on her shortsword the whole time.

 

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Spike tried to avoid the injured ubervamp's berserker attack, dodging sideways even as he continued to edge back toward the end of the tunnel, but the creature's lunge drove its shoulder into his right side. Its momentum knocked him off balance. That and the fact he was trying to reach behind him using Buffy's view of the stake's trajectory rather than his own meant that, instead of snatching the wooden rod cleanly from the air, his fingertips merely tipped it to one side. Giving up on the weapon for the moment, he clutched at the leather the Neanderthal vamp wore and curled his legs up as he rolled backwards. As his back met the earthen floor, he pushed out with his booted feet, keeping hold of the other vampire's clothing for just a fraction of a second longer, so that it tumbled as it flew through the air. Hoping that he had gained a temporary reprieve, his gaze sought out the second of his adversaries. When he realised that it was currently trying to pull his own axe from the tunnel wall, he used the precious seconds he had gained to grasp for the fallen stake and regain his feet with a scything leg motion. By the time he did, 'Ol' One Hand', as Spike christened him, was also back on his feet and in the armoury.

 

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'To me, pet!' Spike's 'voice' cut through the rhythm of thrust and parry that the slayer had entered into with her opponent. Transferring her concentration momentarily from her own fight to see what was happening with his, she realised that Spike had been forced into the armoury and was trying to manoeuvre his way into a position where he blocked the one-handed Turok Han from attacking her from behind. The second of Spike's opponents was also making its axe-wielding way into the armoury.

Keeping up her defence until the last instant, she fell back until she could meet Spike in the centre of the room. He faced one way, she the other, as all three ubervamps moved to circle the pair. Spike  transferred his stake to his right hand and, as one, the couple reached out, his fingertips curling over hers, as if they were preparing to dance a gavotte. Within seconds the injured Turok Han made a dive for Spike, the blondes sidestepping, one to either side, raising their hands as they pulled them apart. The creature exploded in a cloud of dust, its head severed from its body by the garrotte that Wes had given them after their encounter at the high school. Buffy released her grip and the wire retracted back into the T-shaped handle between Spike's fingers. 'One down,' thought the slayer, but she knew that in a sense it was a hollow victory. That little trick was pretty much a one shot deal, at least so far as this fight went, and they weren't going to be able to get out of there until all three had been despatched. The dance was far from over.