It's seven in the morning on Tuesday, November 2, 2004 in Cleveland, Ohio. A side street on the southern fringe of downtown is quiet and deserted, until a column of sixty demons appears. Some are scary-looking, some bizarre, others just ridiculous. Most are larger than a typical human. All march with purpose. From the roofs of apartment buildings and the levels of a parking garage, people start hurling rocks at them. Many demons duck and put up their hands and paws and for protection. The column stops. Four large demons in front turn around and urge the others to run the gauntlet. With a loud yell, they do this. All of them make it through, save for eleven who were knocked down. One is dead, his skull crushed by a cinder block. They demons make it to the end of the street when a crossbow bolt pierces the chest of one of the four demons in the vanguard. They stop. Out of nowhere, three young women and one young man step in their path. The youngsters are heavily armed with swords, axes and daggers.

"Today's a truce day," the injured demon says, clutching the arrow and snapping off the back end.

"We don't have truce days," Felicia, a tall thin blonde girl with broad shoulders, replies.

"We ain't got weapons. We ain't gonna cause no trouble," a demon in the second row pleads. The four humans don't look too impressive, but the demons clearly respect and fear them.

"You don't need weapons to cause trouble," say Emma, a short, strongly-built Taiwanese-American girl standing to Felicia's right.

"We're only exercising our rights," a regal-looking demon in a long yellow cape with a short stick in his right hand tells them. Connor, who stands to Felicia's left, and Dana, who stands to his right, start laughing wickedly.

"You don't have any rights," Connor spits back. "You're demons." A screaming mob armed with baseball bats and crowbars storms out of the parking garage and attacks the back of the column from the left and the right. The demons in front look alarmed.

"You have the right to remain silent," Dana jokes as Connor and her smirk at each other. "While we kill you." The demons defend themselves as best they can. Connor takes on the regal-looking demon, who puts his stick away and punches Connor's face with a right cross. Connor responds in kind, then adds a left roundhouse kick that sends the demon staggering back. Now he swings the ax in his left hand to the left and the right, beheading two other demons. Dana guts a demon with her dagger and slits another's throat. A demon between them knocks her back with a left jab and grabs Connor's neck with his right hand. Dana takes out a short curved sword and cuts off the demon's right arm. Connor, now freed from the choking, drives his ax deep into the demon's skull. Felicia and Emma kill or drive away the others in the vanguard. The demons flee while the mob dispatches with the wounded and beheads some of the monsters before carrying away their trophies. Eighteen demons are dead. Connor catches his breath and looks at Dana.

"Nice work." Dana smiles. "Ya got some goo on your face." Connor puts his right hand to her left cheek and tries to wipe away the blue demon guts.

"You're messy, too," She puts her right hand to his forehead. They both smile and lean in to kiss. Felicia and Emma giggle and roll their eyes.

"It's a little early for celebration," Robin Wood says as he steps out of his car and walks up to the gang. Connor and Dana turn to see him just before their lips meet.

"You mean there's more, Rob?" Connor asks.

"Tip of the iceberg."

"Rock and roll," Felicia says, getting in the front passenger's seat.

"You're riding? Like a normal?," Connor asks with scorn.

"I'm saving my energy for the fight."

"You too?," Connor asks Dana with disappointment. She sits in the center of the back seat and puts her left hand on the seat next to her, smiling and offering it to Connor. "See you there, slowpokes." Connor takes off. Dana appears disappointed. Connor doesn't like to play footsie and grope just before a fight because it gets him inconveniently excited.

"You don't know where we're going!," Robin shouts out his window.

"Yes he does," Dana replies.

"That's right. He can smell them," Emma notes. She and Felicia cringe. Dana thinks it's kinda cool. Wood floors it and races off to intercept the column he was scouting while the Slayers were fighting.

"Now these ones are real freaks," he tells them. "I couldn't believe it when I saw 'em." About two miles to the northeast, eighty demons march in twenty rows of four, their arms locked in solidarity, as they sing "We Shall Overcome." A crowd of about forty outraged black men and women pelt the demons with bricks and insults. The demons turn the other cheek and continue on, many of them bleeding. Connor dashes up from behind, overtaking the column in a blur of speed. The demons in front halt when they see him before them.

"We shall not fight you," a tall, thin, dignified gray and brown demon tells the boy with the ax.

"Good. That makes my job even easier." A demon eight rows back whispers something about how it's pointless to negotiate with a psychotic. "What was that!?," Connor yells.

"Nothing," the scared demon who made the crack replies. "I-I-I wasn't talking about you."

"Why do you enjoy making others frightened?," the tall demon in front asks Connor in a gentle voice.

"Why you asking me? Ask the demons all around you why they enjoy it?" Connor hears the car approaching. "Time's up," he says with a smile. The three Slayers bound out. Connor backs up to join them. The demons resume singing and marching. The onlookers resume shouting. Wood takes off, to Connor's dismay. The Slayers stand there as the demons approach, not knowing what to do. Felicia and Emma have qualms about massacring demons who don't put up a fight. Dana has similar reservations. However, Connor sees this not as a moral quandary but as a golden opportunity. Dana puts her left hand on his right wrist and makes him lower the ax.

"Okay, so they don't wanna kill people right now. But they will tonight. And tomorrow. And the next night. You don't take 'em out now, you'll be fighting them for months." Connor sighs as his argument fails to sway them and the Slayers back up as the demons approach. "What would Buffy do?," he asks in exasperation. He doesn't know who this "Buffy" is, only that she's revered by the Slayers and presided over a Hellmouth in California that swallowed the town of Sunnydale — one of his first real memories. Dana takes out the scimitar she got from Wood's trunk.

"Kill them all," she declares. Connor's heart flutters. He's not sure why "Kill them all" is such a turn on for him. Dana, who's met Buffy, sees her as a demon killer par excellance, and is unaware of her complicated history with demons. Buffy, meanwhile, has no idea Dana cut the arms off one of those complicated demons.

"Go home, leave these people alone, and we won't hurt you," Emma offers when the demons are six feet in front of them. Connor doesn't understand why she's negotiating with the evil enemy. The demons don't understand why she's telling them to "leave these people alone," since the people are attacking them. The demons keep marching. Connor raises his ax and drives it into a demon's stomach. Even he has reservations about beheading defenseless demons. Now the demon defends himself, knocking Connor down with a right jab. An angry Dana slits his throat. The demons start yelling and a few of them attack as their leader tries in vain to produce calm.

"By any means necessary!," a large demon in the third row yells before bursting out of the column and attacking Connor. A melee ensues. The demons in back get scared. Some of them retreat, only to be cut off by Wood. He presses a button, and out shoot four spikes from under his front bumper, as well as two knives on the sides and several more knives above the back wheel. He guns the engine and plows through the column. The demons scream and leap out of the way while the humans cheer. Several demons receive horrible wounds from his modern-day version of a scythed chariot. Up front, the demons defend themselves, but don't try to hurt the Slayers. But in the thick of a fight, the "good guys" can't tell. Connor and Dana cut a swath of destruction, while Emma and Felicia mostly hold their ground, killing only three demons between them. They get out of Wood's way. He stops before running over the pile of dead demons his fighters have slain and gets out. Connor and Dana run around dispatching the demons who are too injured to flee, to the crowd's delight. Several of the demons appear to be praying while they're slain. Connor thinks they're trying to curse him. When the fight is over, twelve demons lie dead. Wood steps out of his car, and the locals congratulate him on the excellent way he's pimped his ride. Living on the Hellmouth, they honor such demon-killing innovations. He appreciates the accolades, especially coming from his own people. Growing up in Beverly Hills and getting raised by a white Englishman, he heard his share of "sell-out" and "Oreo" insults.

"Is this like some sort of trick?," Emma asks Felicia.

"Hasta be." Felicia is a Sunnydale veteran, so she firmly believes that the only good demon is a dead demon. (Or, in the case of Spike, a demon in the process of committing suicide.) "We got 'em running scared. They can't take us in a fair fight, so they mess with our heads."

"By making us think they've turned the corner?," Emma asks with a smirk. The idea of a demon going good is ludicrous to her. "If you can't beat us - "

"Go to LA!" They both laugh. Connor turns around when he hears his home town mentioned. He's hid large parts of his past, and worries about what would happen if they discovered he's the child of vampires and fathered a goddess who nearly took over the world. Only Dana knows about Quor Toth, but even she's in the dark about what followed.

"Our job's not over," Wood warns them.

"Are we gonna be doing this all day?," Emma whines. They were up late patrolling and got hardly any sleep.

"Just one more. For now. About three miles west of here. I think that's too far even for you, Connor." Dana takes his right hand in her left and leads him towards the car, while Emma argues with Felicia that she should have shotgun because Felicia had it the last time.

"Hey Connor," Robin says just before they get in the car. "Thanks for the heads-up."

"My pleasure."

"Don't know what I would've done without you."

"What the hell were you thinking!?," Angel yells into his cell phone. He's in a hotel room, standing in front of his bed. Spike tries to sleep in the other bed, closer to the window.

"Will you shut the bloody hell up!?"

"Okay. You're right. I'm surprised they'd be out this early as well. But you know I can't help you during the day." Spike gets out of bed, pulls back part of the curtain, and burns Angel with the sun. "Tell them to stay inside. No reprisals. If you kill anyone, I can't help you." Angel hangs up and tosses his phone at Spike's face.

"Hey! Wut wus that for?" Angel points to his scorched shirt. "Sorry. Forgot it wus Armani," Spike replies sarcastically. "You only have six others in the exact same color. Can a bloke get some sleep?"

"They were ambushed."

"A mob?"

"And Slayers."

"At this hour?"

"Someone must have tipped them off."

"So what's the not-so-brilliant plan this time? We keep the Slayers busy while the demons do their civic duty?" Angel pauses.

"Pretty much," he replies defensively.

"Okay." He gets back in bed. "Who knows? Maybe one of the girls knows me from Sunnydale."

"And that would be a good thing?"