Act 2
Fade In:
Title:
8:28:03
Cut To:
Int.
A Team Van – Continuous
“– body,” Kennedy finished. “Over.” She sat back in her seat. Marie had almost driven the van out of the Council parking garage. Denise, a small girl in her early teens with short brown hair, sat on the floor in the back of the van, between the two rows of seats along the walls. She had one of Xander’s repeating crossbows in her hands.
“How do you turn this thing on?” she asked.
“It’s a crossbow,” Skye said matter-of-factly. “You pull the little lever, and it flings tiny little shards of death. There is no ‘off.’ I thought the Slayer Academy covered that in the killing-stuff class.”
“I never got good grades,” Denise admitted.
“I’ll show you,” Morgan said, a warm smile on her face. Denise handed her the crossbow, and the blond slayer depressed a small button on the side of the grip. An audible click could be heard as the crossbow’s safety turned off.
“Guess it was off,” Morgan smirked at Skye, handing the weapon back to Denise. “Turns out you don’t know everything. Shocker.”
“I know what slayer blood tastes like,” Skye replied. She raised one eyebrow. “Do you?”
“Okay, you in the back,” Kennedy called, “it’s time to stop being all passive-aggressive and help us out.”
“Sure, Slick, whatever you say,” replied the vampire. The vehicle was now traveling along a back street lined with old, expensive looking houses. Skye leaned so that her head was just behind Kennedy’s shoulder. “You must be pretty damn desperate, springing me from the joint. Whole town’s gonna blow up, you call me in, okay. But I know you, Kennedy. You’re grasping at straws.” She sat back down. “There is no plan.”
“Wrong again,” Kennedy replied.
“If I can ask, Kennedy,” Marie interjected, “what is the plan? I mean, you never said which direction our team was going to go.”
“We,” Kennedy told her, adjusting her microphone, “are going to follow the vampire’s nose.”
“The vampire?” Skye scoffed. “So now I’m just ‘the vampire’?”
“Apparently,” Kennedy said nonchalantly. “You gonna do your zen thing or yak all night?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the vampire said.
Kennedy turned around in her seat to look at Skye. “You’re telling me those enhanced vamp magic senses of yours aren’t picking something up? There aren’t any blips on the radar screen?”
“If there were, why would I tell you?” Skye answered.
“I know what makes you tick, Skye,” she said. She leaned further in an attempt to get closer to Skye’s face. “Imagine Dawn getting blown up into little tiny bits. Now I’m not talking about walking around drinking people’s blood dead. I’m talking about dead dead. Imagine the flesh being seared away from her bones, her eyes boiling away in their sockets.”
“Ew,” Denise supplied from the floor.
“That’s why you’re gonna help,” Kennedy finished. She and Skye held each other’s eyes for a full three seconds.
Skye finally looked down. “Maybe we should just go straight for a while,” she said quietly.
Kennedy turned back around and looked at Marie. “Do what the vampire says.” Skye rolled her eyes.
“Okay,” Marie answered, with some trepidation.
“Now we’re taking orders from vamps,” Chamique grumbled to Morgan.
Yelling suddenly could be heard over everyone’s comm links.
“– left, turn left. I said turn left!” Vi’s voice was shouting.
“I am turning left!” Dawn’s voice answered. Kennedy and Marie exchanged a baleful glance.
“Not that left!” Vi insisted at maximum volume. “The other left!”
“Stop yelling!” Shannon’s voice shouted, sounding farther away from the microphone.
Kennedy sighed and reached up to turn on her microphone. “B Team, are you aware that your –”
Cut To:
Int.
B Team Van – Same Time
“– comms are open? Over.”
Vi shot Dawn an accusatory look. “Wasn’t me,” the young watcher mouthed silently. Vi sighed before answering. “Sorry, we’ll try to keep it down. Over.” She clicked her mouthpiece off.
The van the girls were sitting in traveled slowly, because of heavy traffic, along a wide road lined with auto dealerships and chain restaurants.
“So,” Dawn continued, “now that you’ve let the whole world know, you want to let me in on what just happened back there?”
“It’s not my fault you don’t know which way is left,” Vi defended.
“Do you wanna drive?” Dawn asked testily.
“I can’t,” Vi answered.
The girls in the back of the van looked confused. “Um…what do you mean you can’t?” Christa asked.
Vi looked a little embarrassed. “I don’t have a driver’s license,” she explained. “I sort of…failed the test…ten times.”
“What is it with slayers and driving?” Dawn wondered.
“Um… guys?” Jaye ventured, looking out the small window in the back door of the van. “The tall buildings are that way.” She pointed backwards out the window.
“We need to turn around,” Vi said to herself, realizing. “Dawn, turn around,” she ordered.
“It’s a six lane road,” a harried Dawn answered. “We can’t just ‘turn around’.”
In the back seat, Shannon seemed to shrink down into her chair.
“You could flip a U-ie,” Vi suggested.
“I am not going to make a U-turn in –”
Cut To:
Int.
C Team Van – Same Time
Silence hung over Faith and Jeff’s van. The slayer stoically steered the vehicle through an expensive-looking residential neighborhood on its way west. In the back of the van, Lorinda leaned forward, rubbing her face with her hands. She let out a long breath.
Sarah, a girl with strawberry blond hair who wasn’t much older than Lorinda, was compulsively tapping her fingernails against the edge of her seat. Lorinda’s eyes twitched a little each time the noise repeated itself. Clack click clack clack. Clack click clack clack. Clack click clack…
Faith snapped. “Could you please cut –”
Black Out
Fade In:
Title:
8:31:23
Cut To:
Int.
C Team Van – Continuous
“– that out!”
Sarah jumped four inches above her seat, moving both her hands to her lap as quickly as possible. A startled Lorinda looked at the back of the heads in the front seat with some trepidation before self-consciously averting her gaze.
“This your first one?” rasped Connie, who was in the seat next to Lorinda, breaking the silence. She had a large, relatively new-looking scar covering the left half of her neck.
Lorinda looked at her with wide eyes for a moment, then nodded.
“I remember my first patrol,” Connie continued, her voice low and scratchy. “It was just a graveyard sweep, couple of vamps. But I was so terrified…” She looked down at the smaller girl. “Guess you drew the short straw, huh?”
Lorinda thought about this for a moment, then broke into a grin. “Yeah, I guess I did.” She looked up at Connie. “Thanks,” she told her sincerely.
“Don’t mention it.”
“So where’d you get the…” Lorinda pointed at Connie’s scar.
“Oh, this?” Connie asked. Lorinda nodded. “That crazy zombie dog ripped it out. Y’know, Shannon’s mutt?”
Lorinda’s expression darkened. “Shannon.”
“It tore open a whole side of my throat,” Connie continued. “They had to take me to the hospital in a helicopter and everything. They told me later that I almost died.”
“Wow,” Lorinda said, obviously curious, “what was that like?”
The older slayer looked seriously down at the younger one. “It really, really sucked.”
“You two, cut the chit-chat!” Faith called. She looked over at Jeff, who was sitting in the passenger seat, his brow furrowed in concentration. “You gettin’ anything?”
“No,” Jeff answered, his voice filled with frustration. “Nothing.”
“Well, hurry it up,” she told him brusquely. “We ain’t got all –”
Cut To:
Int.
Watchers Council – Library – Same Time
“Ah!” Without looking up from a particularly thick volume, Rowena managed a general attention-getting noise despite holding an ornate pen between her teeth. She raised her hand. “Ah, Ah, Ah!”
“You found something?” Robin asked, appearing over her shoulder. Around the pair, activity continued at a brisk pace. Every research table was covered with various texts.
Rowena took the time to take the pen out of her mouth before answering. “Maybe. It’s a decent lead, in any case.”
“Go on,” Robin prompted, craning his neck to see what she had been reading.
“The Molna,” Rowena explained. “Peaceful race of demons in Central America, dating back at least to the Mayans.”
“I take it they’re no longer quite so peaceful?”
“Not quite,” Rowena echoed. “In the early twentieth century the Old Council, with its policy of ‘all demons are bad,’ forcibly removed the Molna from their ancestral lands in the Yucatan. Since then, they’ve become refugees, demons without a home, and the Molna have become known for doing things like…”
“…making mystical bombs?” Robin finished.
“Exactly.”
Robin sat down next to Rowena, a serious look on his face. “So, if this is it, if they’re the ones doing this, then that means…”
“It’s our fault.” This time it was Rowena who finished her colleague’s sentence. “Well, sort of. The old Council’s fault.”
“It means,” Robin told her, “that we’re the ones they think are to blame for ruining their lives.”
Rowena looked away from her chief of security and sighed.
“You wanna do a computer check?” she asked him when she turned her face back towards his.
“Might as well,” he agreed, standing up. The motion was somewhat awkward because of his artificial leg. Rowena handed him the book she’d been reading as he left. The leg, however, didn’t seem to be much of a problem once he was moving. She watched him go in silence, dark circles under her eyes. Then she suddenly dropped her head down to the table with a soft thud.
Cut To:
Ext.
Cleveland Shoreway – Same Time
A black Council van weaved in and out of traffic at about a hundred miles per hour, whipping down a divided highway lined on one side by a series of several-story brick buildings and on the other side by the black expanse of Lake Erie.
Cut To:
Int.
D Team Van – Same Time
Andrew hung onto his armrests for dear life. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“What’s the matter, Andrew,” Heli replied, without a hint of a smile, “you don’t trust me?”
“I’m gonna get carsick!” he whined.
“Better not!” the tiny CiCi cautioned from the back of the van.
A distant siren could now be heard in the background. “Um…guys?” Alisa announced from her perch peering out the back window. She had an Australian accent. “I think we’ve got a tail.”
Heli glanced at her side mirror to see the flashing lights of a police car, then muttered something in Finnish under her breath.
“Is he pulling us over?” asked Zoe, a mousy-looking slayer with glasses.
“Looks like,” Alisa told her.
“This is what happens when you flout society’s rules,” Andrew admonished Heli. “Learn from my example, young padawan, and turn away from this path while there is still time.”
“Shut. Up.” Heli growled through her teeth while she slowed the van. Andrew quickly found something particularly of interest outside his window.
As the police car pulled alongside, Heli rolled the van to a stop on the side of the road.
“This is the problem with keeping all this a secret,” Marly pointed out. “Crap like this starts happening, and suddenly the whole city’s in danger because of a traffic violation.”
“Oh my God,” CiCi exclaimed, sounding quite the valley girl, “my parents would completely freak out. Then there was this girl at school…my old school, y’know, before I was a superhero. Anyway, it would be so great to see the look on her –”
“Quiet girls,” Heli ordered. “He’s coming.”
She pressed a button that rolled down the driver’s side window. Marly hurriedly kicked a couple of swords under a seat. After a moment, a Cleveland City Policeman walked into view. He was a burly kind of guy, middle-aged with a mustache. He peered in at the six of them, looking somewhat perplexed.
“Is there a problem, officer?” Heli asked.
“Well,” he said matter-of-factly, “you were traveling about forty miles over the speed limit.”
“We’re sorry, officer, we just…” Heli glanced back at Marly, whose expression seemed to communicate ‘don’t look at me!’ “We…um, I can’t explain it, but we’re in a hurry, so…”
“I could tell,” the police officer said, smiling at his own joke. He poked his head further towards the window, getting a better look at the five girls and Andrew. “Where you guys goin’, a cheerleading convention?”
Heli leaned back in her seat suddenly in surprise, as Andrew pushed an arm past her towards the policeman.
“Officer, I’m sure there’s been a misunderstanding,” he said, as close as he could manage to suavely. He held out a wallet displaying his Council badge. This officer grabbed it out of Andrew’s hand and examined it. Heli gave Andrew a quick questioning glance before turning back to the officer.
“This supposed to mean something to me?” the officer finally asked, handing it back through the window.
“Maybe if you just called your –” Andrew began in a high-pitched voice, before Heli cut him off.
“Officer, we broke the law. We’re sorry, we’ll never do it again. Now, if you’re going to write us a ticket, could we get on with that?”
The policeman examined Heli’s face for a moment, then nodded.
“Fine. It’s not gonna be cheap, though. Forty miles over the limit, you got several minors back there not buckled in…” As he spoke, he got out his ticket pad and began writing. Heli sat back in her seat, a large frown on her face. “I’m gonna need to see license and –”
Cut To:
Ext.
Council Helicopter – Above Cleveland – Same Time
“– not going to sense anything if you keep asking me!” Willow insisted, using her radio to talk to the team in an effort to be heard despite the loud noise of the rotors.
“What am I supposed to do?” Marissa railed, also using her radio. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a deadline here, and we’re the best shot at finding the target and reaching it in time.”
“I need you to stop pressuring me,” Willow said. “I’m trying to concentrate in a semi-unstable flying vehicle.”
“You can’t deal with pressure, you don’t belong out here,” Marissa stated.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I saw two of my best friends destroyed by this job, and it just made me stronger, quicker, better.”
“Mia and Janet,” Willow said quietly.
“That’s how you gotta deal,” Marissa concluded. “Why do you think Allister gave me this job?”
Willow looked over at Marissa and blinked several times at this statement. Then she sighed and adjusted a setting on her headset.
“Base, this is Coven One,” she began. “Does anybody have something yet? Over.”
Cut To:
Int.
Watchers Council – War Room – Same Time
“Not yet,” Xander replied, surrounded by security screens and a computer keyboard. “Sorry, Will. Over.”
“That’s okay,” Willow told him. “We’ve still got, what, forty minutes? Over.”
Black Out
Title:
8:34:58
Cut To:
Int.
Watchers Council – War Room – Continuous
“Just about,” he confirmed. “Of course, this could all be nothing, so don’t worry too hard. Over.”
“We’ll think positive,” Willow answered, “I’ll keep looking, though, just in case. Over.”
As Xander heard the sound of Willow’s radio being clicked off, raised voices grew louder somewhere nearby.
“I don’t care where it is, just find it!”
“I’m telling you, I don’t have the security access for that kind of – Mr. Harris!”
Jackson, a bespectacled young watcher, appeared in the doorway of the communications center. Over his shoulder, another, even younger watcher looked on impatiently with his arms crossed. Xander spun his chair to face the pair.
“Markham’s trying to get me to access the Black Chronicles,” Jackson explained. “I told him that neither one of us has that kind of clearance, but he’s being weird about it.”
“It’s not weird!” Markham exploded. He quieted down slightly, but an edge remained to his voice. “I really think that the religious rites of the Makhash tribe may be relevant to the current problem, and I don’t have time to worry about all these stupid regulations!”
“Whoa!” Xander exclaimed, hands in the air. “A lot of tension. I can see that. But you guys gotta stay cool. That’s the only way to deal with these impending death situations.”
This drew no response from the two young watchers.
“Fine,” Xander conceded. He got up, walked over to a nearby cabinet, and grabbed a pen and pad from one of the shelves. “I’m going to clear you guys this time,” he said, scribbling something down. “Don’t see why not. But you both need to simmer down. We don’t have time for panic right now.” He handed the note he’d written over to Jackson with a flourish. “You can panic after you’re dead.”
Jackson seemed unsure of what to say. Markham didn’t look any less angry. “What is this?” he asked.
“It’s your clearance,” Xander explained.
“Um…” Jackson wasn’t certain how to begin. “You don’t have the authority to do that…Only a Department Head can, and you’re not, so… I just wanted you to talk him out of it.” He jerked a thumb in Markham’s direction.
Markham looked pensive. “Harris…oh! Are you that guy who had that fight with your slayer girlfriend? Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”
“That’s why I don’t date slayers,” Jackson winked.
“I thought it was ’cause you couldn’t snag one?” Markham quipped, seemingly out of his bad mood.
“But I …” Xander began, but he couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
“Well, I did have my eye on that blonde, but she’s never around…”
“You mean the Swedish chick?”
“Dude, she’s from Finland.”
“Whatever.”
And the pair walked off down the hall. A stunned Xander watched them recede into the distance for a moment. “At least they’re not panicking anymore,” he said to himself. Then the sound of voices brought him striding back to the main microphone.
“This is Base, please repeat. Over.”
“Base, this is Slayer Two,” Vi’s voice said, “we’re stuck here and…”
“Wait,” Faith’s voice interrupted rather rudely. “I thought I was Slayer Two.”
“Well, we never really discussed it,” Vi answered, “but. while you were gone, I sort of started…”
“Guys!” Xander intervened. “It doesn’t matter whose code name is what. Impending death situation, remember? What were you –”
Cut To:
Int.
B Team Van – Same Time
“– saying Vi? Over.”
Vi looked around at the bumper-to-bumper traffic surrounding the van before answering. “We’re not moving here. Our van is stuck in traffic on…” she trailed off.
“Clinton,” Jaye supplied.
“This isn’t Clinton, this is Lorain,” Dawn corrected. “At least I hope it is…”
“We’re lost,” Vi informed Xander, “and we haven’t moved in several minutes because of the traffic.” She glanced back at the occupants of the van. “We’ve taken a vote, and we’re gonna abandon the van and set out on foot. Over.”
“You took a vote?” Faith’s voice interjected.
Xander ignored her. “Roger that, B Team, I’ll inform the others. Do you have any idea of your current location? Over.”
Vi examined the surrounding area. “Well, we’re across from a Marathon station,” she supplied, “does that help?”
“And there’s a bar called the Hot Corner over there,” Jaye said, pointing up the street a little ways. “I think I went there once, but I don’t really remember how to get there because I was really…” she paused, realizing. “…tired,” she finished.
Vi and Dawn both cast suspicious glares at the younger Slayer, who was obviously not twenty-one.
“Anything?” Vi asked Xander.
“I’ll see if anybody has a yellow pages,” was his answer. “Good luck. Over.”
Dawn turned off the ignition and the van’s engine sputtered to a stop. Vi sighed and opened her door.
Cut To:
Ext.
Lorain Avenue … or possibly Clinton Avenue – Same Time
“So, what’s with Faith?” Dawn asked as she stepped out of the van into the street. It was packed with cars, but they weren’t moving. “She was totally eavesdropping, wasn’t she?”
Vi walked into view around the front of the van. “I think she’s having issues right now with the whole demotion thing. Or probation, or whatever’s happening with her.”
Around the back of the van, Christa was helping Jaye down to the level of the street.
“So, how’d you get them to serve you?” Christa asked.
“Fake ID,” Jaye answered. “Said I was from Connecticut, but I wasn’t complaining. I could hook you up. Y’know that girl who works in the –”
Cut To:
Int.
A Team Van – Same Time
“– not cut out for this job,” Skye was saying. Kennedy studiously ignored her.
“Aren’t you supposed to be reading magical wave patterns or something?” Marie asked.
“I am,” Skye told her. “You’d be surprised how much the whole vampire thing helps with multitasking. So anyway, back to you,” she continued, turning her attention back to Kennedy. “I mean, I don’t know what that blonde was thinking. You’re the one who let a vampire bite you while having sex. Oh yeah, I heard about that. And, by the way, I’m not interested. Or what about that time you ran off to Europe so you could cheat on your girlfriend?”
Kennedy flinched, but tried to hide it from the vampire in the back seat. “You gonna talk me to death, is that the plan?”
“Not really,” Skye admitted. “This is just fun. It’s so freeing, being able to say what you think with nothing holding you back. Try it some time.”
“Try making people feel bad?” Chamique snorted. “No thanks.”
“You say that now because you’re held down,” Skye said. “Humans are a prisoner of their conscience. I, on the other hand, am free as a bird. I say what I want, do what I want, without having to worry about how it’ll make me feel. So, which one of us is handcuffed now?”
Xander’s voice came over the radio. “Slayer One, this is Base. Come in Slayer One. Over.”
“Thank the Lord,” Kennedy sighed, glad to have another subject to talk about. “Base, this is Slayer One. Go ahead. Over.”
“B Team’s stuck in traffic and voted to abandon their van. They’ve set out on foot. Over.”
“What a surprise,” Skye said sarcastically.
Kennedy released a resigned breath before answering. “Understood, Base. Do you know where they are now? Over.”
“They’re lost,” Xander told her.
“Dawn never was good with directions,” Skye observed.
“All right, we’ll figure something out,” Kennedy said. “Over.” The slayer turned off her microphone and looked back at Skye.
“Are you sensing anything specific?” she asked the vampire.
Skye shrugged. “Not really.”
Black Out
Title:
8:38:49
Cut To:
Int.
A Team Van – Continuous
Kennedy turned to her driver. “We’re gonna have to cover downtown,” she said. “Step on it.” Marie made a turn and put her foot on the gas.
“What if she’s lying?” the driving slayer asked her superior.
“She isn’t,” Kennedy assured her, and then leaned in to say something confidentially. “She really would do anything for Dawn. It’s weird, isn’t –”
Cut To:
Int.
C Team Van – Same Time
“– nothing,” Jeff was telling Faith.
“Figures,” Faith grumbled.
In the back of the van, Lorinda glanced around at the girls around her, waiting to see if anyone would say anything. No one was making eye contact with one another, and the only sound was the rumble of the vehicle’s tires against the road.
“What if we just kept going?” Lorinda said quietly.
“What was that?” Faith asked sternly. She looked in the rearview mirror. “We have a suggestion from the peanut gallery?” she asked, the tone in her voice making it clear that whoever had done the suggesting would be sorry.
Everyone in the back was still studiously avoiding catching Lorinda’s eyes. She spoke up again, more confidently. “I said, what if we just keep going?”
“Interesting,” Faith replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “That’s interesting, Lorinda. That is your name, right?”
Lorinda just nodded.
“And just where are we supposed to ‘just keep going’ to, exactly?”
“A-anywhere,” Lorinda managed, her momentary confidence beginning to waver. “If this is a bomb, it’s gotta have a certain, y’know, blast area, right? If we aren’t gonna find the thing, maybe we should be getting out of its way as fast as we can.”
“You’re telling me we should run away?” Faith asked. It was more of an accusation than anything else.
Connie ran a hand over her face, turning away as if she couldn’t bear to watch.
“Rumor has it you did,” Lorinda nearly whispered.
Faith slammed on the brakes. The sound of a car swerving to avoid the suddenly stopped vehicle could be heard. Faith rounded on Lorinda.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard or what you’ve been taught, but that’s not what we do around here. And if that’s not for you, we don’t make anybody stay. So we’re gonna find this damn bomb, or we’re gonna die trying. If that’s not good enough for you, start walking now.”
Faith’s last statement seemed to push Lorinda over the edge.
“You said yourself we weren’t gonna find a bomb out here! Why would it be out here?” the young slayer yelled. “This is frickin’ Westlake!”
Connie touched Lorinda’s arm. “Sweetie…” she began, but the younger girl shook her off.
“No! I’m sick of this crap! This isn’t heroic, this is just being stubborn!” Faith looked taken aback by the younger girl’s tirade. “If this thing is real, then we’re all gonna die if we stay here. I’m not ready to die!”
“I said no,” Faith warned.
“We’re slayers,” Lorinda argued. “We’re supposed to protect people. But what about us, huh? How can we protect people if we’re dead!”
“You’re not a slayer,” Faith said matter-of-factly. “As of right now. Connie, remind me to talk to Her Blondness when we get back to –”
“I’ve got it!” Jeff announced.
Faith was back in the front seat in an instant. “Which way?”
“Um…”
“Dammit, which way!” she yelled.
“Four lights up, make a right,” Jeff yelled back. “Jeez!”
Faith stepped hard on the gas. In the back seat, Lorinda looked like she’d just been hit by a truck.
Cut To:
Int.
Watchers Council – Computer Room – Same Time
Sitting at a computer terminal, Robin clicked on his microphone. “Base, this is Security One. Put me through to everybody. Over.”
“Will do,” Xander’s voice replied. Robin rubbed his eyes as he waited a moment. “Okay,” Xander told him, “you’re set.”
“This is Security One, everybody,” Robin said. “This is Robin. Rowena uncovered something I’ve confirmed. We’ve found out what we’re dealing with here. The Molna are a clan of demons from Central America who are known to be perpetrators of past incidents of mystical terrorism. Small stuff, time temporarily going out of whack, cars crashing, that kind of thing.”
He looked around at the computer room. Watchers and watchers-in-training were at most of the terminals, but they had stopped what they were doing to look over at Robin. Rowena walked through the door of the lab, making eye contact with Robin.
“However, we –”
Cut To:
Ext.
Council Helicopter – Above Cleveland – Same Time
“– think they’ve moved on to bigger stuff,” Robin continued.
Willow and Marissa were looking in opposite directions, but were both listening.
“Our Mexico City branch picked up some intelligence that the Molna were asking around for Berylite Powder, a primary ingredient for casting a spell known as Apollo’s Hammer.”
Willow’s mouth opened a little and her eyes widened in recognition.
“This information wasn’t –”
Cut To:
Ext.
Cleveland City Street – Same Time
“– passed on to us because it didn’t seem relevant to the American sector. However, recently checkpoints along the Canadian border north of Buffalo have recorded individuals matching the description of Molna members bringing Berylite powder, coconut seeds, and the root of a certain Amazonian mushroom into the United States.”
Vi leaned against the darkened window of a carpet store, looking at the blurry shapes of her team farther down the sidewalk as they walked on without her.
“Of course, separately, all these ingredients are –”
Cut To:
Int.
B Team Van – Same Time
“– perfectly legal,” Robin’s voice crackled over Jeff’s radio. He glanced over at Faith, who was driving as fast as she could. “For those of you who don’t know, which is probably most of us, Apollo’s Hammer is the most destructive spell known to man.”
Faith honked her horn angrily at an unlucky car as she swerved around it.
“It hasn’t been used in recorded history because it’s as destructive to the sorcerer casting the spell as it is to the intended –”
Cut To:
Int.
A Team Van – Same Time
“– target. Basically, the spell creates a sort of monster fire storm.”
Skye had shut up, for once, and was straining to hear over Chamique’s radio. The African-American slayer leaned away defensively. In the front seat, Kennedy and Marie cast each other a worried look.
“If not defused, we’re looking at a two-hundred to three-hundred mile radius in every direction around the bomb –”
Cut To:
Int.
Watchers Council – Computer Room – Same Time
“– that will be burnt to a cinder,” Robin finished. “Over.”
The computer lab around him was silent for an extended moment, and no voices immediately made themselves heard over the radio.
“So,” Rowena announced into her radio, “this is not a hoax, and you all have less than thirty minutes.”
Black Out
End of Act Two