— Thor's Slayers —

Thor's Slayers
~ Part II ~

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Chapter One

Faith Under Fire

Update: 12/4/16 - Continuing to update story with occasional corrections and inserting dates for a timeline

#

Two Years Later...
October 20th, 2005

Faith slowly moved her head to peek around the tree, hoping to locate the other remaining member of her squad, or barring that, trying to locate enemy positions. Instead she jerked her head back just in time to avoid the hail of incoming fire. She heard the distinct whizz of projectiles speeding through the air at high velocity. A velocity that she wasn't prepared to test her Slayer reflexes and speed against.

"Fuck," Faith muttered under her breath. In a slow but fluid movement, she lowered herself to a crouch and began a steady duck walk to another area that provided better cover, and perhaps a better vantage point as well.

She passed a body. A friend that was now sprawled out on the dirt and whose fatigues showed the telltale red splatters that gave proof to his fate. Roger Watts hadn't made it far after the initial ambush, and his body was proof that their attackers had been initially successful. But they had paid a hefty price for taking out her friends, she and Boyd had made sure of it. But now she and Boyd were separated and, if she was right, surrounded.

Faith kept moving; the slow measured pace of a duck walk that kept her low to the ground and gave less of a profile for would-be snipers to hit. There was another whizzing noise that had her going prone in a flash. The grunt that followed that whizz had come from someone else though, a nearby someone else. Somebody who, by the sound of that grunt, was now out-of-action.

A friend? The enemy? The enemy: that nebulous description that seemed to exemplify the fundamental difference between Slaying and...

A movement caught her eye.

Faith might be new to firearms and relatively new to fighting as part of a small disciplined unit, but she was still a Slayer. Her body reacted as it was now trained to do, with the speed, reflexes, and instincts of a Slayer to augment that reaction.

She rolled to the side, bringing her rifle to her shoulder even as she did so. The almost minuscule amount of force she applied to the trigger filled the air with her returning fire.

This time it was her projectiles that filled the air. Her munitions that made that now familiar noise which brought with it the potential for mayhem and destruction. This time, it was not her friend's body left in the dirt like so much refuse.

And that was what separated a Slayer from...whatever she was or was becoming. Slaying is personal, always about violence and death with the stake or blade in your hand. Slaying was feeling the flesh of your foes give beneath your strength, or being forced to endure the claws and fangs which belonged to the monsters which haunt humanity's nightmares. Slaying was magic and prophecy, about the "gift" bestowed by the Powers that Be. Even if she were now only one in hundreds...thousands of such girls, they were all, in some way, the Slayer.

Now Faith was left pressing a trigger, a trigger that's squeeze had resulted in a body toppling from a sniper blind in the low branch of a tree perhaps 75 meters away. She couldn't even see the body, but she heard the thump as flesh met earth. A combination of engineering and combustion were her strengths now, not mystical empowerment.

Before arriving in Sunnydale, the first time, she had held a gun back in Southie, but had never fired one. That hadn't changed until Sam brought her to a shooting range for an impromptu lesson before she began any formal organized training.

As it turns out, her Slayer abilities had extended beyond the standard arsenal of a Slayer. A week after that lesson, she decided to have some of her new friends and acquaintances over at her new apartment. When Sam had mentioned Faith's skill, a challenge had been immediately issued by Jack.

To Sam's amusement, and General Hammond's mortification, Faith was able to demonstrate her skill with her usual class and efficiency.

The mortification that Hammond felt had been two-fold. One was that it took place on the Air Force Academy's shooting range where more than a few onlookers had been witness to Faith's demonstration. The second item of mortification, and Faith's demonstration of skill and class, was her ability to create a remarkably accurate picture of a man's genitalia with bullet holes.

Of course, what made it particularly satisfying, to Faith, Sam, and Janet at least, was Faith's second display of her finesse that had her emptying an entire clip with the Beretta M9 into the 'tip' of her earlier masterpiece, all without a missing a single shot at 20 meters.

There had been a collective wince and involuntary flinch in the attending male population.

Faith smiled at the memory but sobered when she remembered her current circumstances. The Slayer made her way into the leafy underbrush, taking great care to avoid snapping any branches that might betray her location. By her count, there should be five more enemy combatants in the area.

She would assume, cautiously so, that the unseen shots and the following grunt earlier had belonged to her last remaining squadmate. It had sounded like Boyd, and if it was him, than she was alone in the forest with five men who wanted to nail her. And not in the good kind of way.

She found a small area that was ringed with small boulders. A very sensible place to park oneself if they were on the defensive. It was a solid tactical decision that would give her a little time to plan her next move...but in the last two years, she hadn't changed all that much.

Faith smiled then. A slow smile that crept up her face like the sun crept up the early morning sky. No, she thought, I'm not trapped here with them. They're trapped here with me.

Faith crouched down, closed her eyes, and listened. She was motionless, scarcely even breathing as she listened.

There!

The Slayer opened her eyes and moved.

#

He walked as he been trained to do so, methodically and quietly. It wouldn't be long before they caught up with her. Only she and one other, the CO of their squad, had been able to evade his men's carefully executed ambush. It had been costly, but taking out half of their team had made it worthwhile.

A quick hand signal had one of his men and single remaining woman under his command peeling from his flank to fade into the nearby foliage. Taking those positions would allow for maximum concealment and while providing a stage to offer a quick response to any sighting of her. Another hand signal had the third remaining soldier under his command moving towards a particularly tall tree fitted with a very well hidden blind. That left him and the final surviving man of his original three fire teams moving in the general direction of the last audible shots. They walked carefully, taking advantage of any cover that crossed their path while remaining watchful of their surroundings.

There was an explosive 'crack' that had him jerking his head towards the noise in response, only to see a large rock rolling down the nearby stone face with which it had collided.

His eyebrows rose and he crouched down, looking for the woman who was undoubtedly responsible for the obvious lure. He turned, preparing to issue orders to the man watching his six.

His man was gone.

No, not gone, he realized. He grimaced as he saw a hand, a man's hand, stretched out towards him, a supplication to him for aid. The large trunk of a tree obscured the rest of the man's body, but that single appendage in sight was covered in that unmistakable red substance that bespoke of the man's status.

He realized, numbly, that the thrown rock's impact had made hearing and tracking the discharge of her gun impossible. And she had dragged that man away without his having seen or heard anything. All in just a few seconds.

The hair on his neck rose as he realized that the quiet rumors about this...Faith must be even more accurate than he had thought possible.

Making a decision, he moved towards the thick ferns he'd sent his other two men to use as cover. It wasn't a reckless retreat, a headless rush to find safety, but a quick and careful walk that had him dropping between the two soldiers he'd send out just a minute or two before.

"Did you see where the fuck she-" The man's words were cut off as he let out an involuntary gasp.

The man on his left looked like he'd been rolled through mud before he'd been executed. Every single centimeter of exposed skin was covered with dirt and...other fluids. The woman on the right, however, almost looked just fine. But the red splatter that covered both her helmet and the ground nearby meant that somebody had managed to stalk close enough to shoot her in the back of the head, twice by his count, without her having been able to even raise a cry in warning.

A quick assessment of the situation made the events fairly clear to him. She must have managed to stalk up to the duo. She double tapped the woman on the right before dragging the other man through the nearby wet patch of dirt, he now took note of, to keep him occupied. Occupied and silent. Obviously, she had managed to wrestle a man nearly twice her size before finally ending it with a shot to the forehead.

The man's breathing became harsher as he doubled back, hoping to seek shelter under the watchful gaze of the man he'd sent to the sniper blind. This time, his movement was a little less cautious, a little more reckless. But he wasn't fleeing, he told himself, he was regrouping so as to neutralize the final threat on the field.

He still hadn't wondered why he himself had not yet been her prey, still thinking only of gathering his remaining man to assure himself of the man's safety and readiness to face the woman who had made the forest into her hunting ground.

He put a hand to his mouth and warbled their established greeting. He calmed himself and made ready to climb up the large pine that the sniper blind had been carefully concealed in.

He never started that trek though.

Instead, he had gone motionless upon his first sight at the closest branches of the tree. He stood there, stunned, mouth agape in patent disbelief. There was the man he'd assigned to the blind. Except he wasn't in the blind or in any other kind of position one might describe as secure. No, secure was not tied up and hanging head first from a branch perhaps ten feet above the forest floor. His arms and legs had been tied tightly to his body and the rope, and god knows where she managed to acquire that, was looped around his feet Those looped feet were attached to the branch where he hung, swaying slightly as he squirmed.

His man was looking at him and was saying something, or shouting something judging by the volume. But the man had been gagged, his mouth stuffed with...

He squinted, trying to figure out what the man had been gagged with. It shouldn't have mattered but the gag was so incongruous to their woodland fatigues and forested surroundings. They were a bright red, almost shiny like satin.

His thoughts stopped.

His friend had been gagged by...panties. Faith's panties, he felt certain. His face went hot and he felt himself flush as he just stared in astonishment. A finger tapped his shoulder and he turned, still too stunned to react the way he should have.

A brunette, beautiful even through the mud encrusted clothes and the camouflage paint that covered her face, stood there with a feral grin and a rifle level with his chest.

Like him, she wore standard woodland combat fatigues, though she had chosen to wear a boonie hat as opposed to a cap or beret. Her smile hadn't abated at his perusal. In fact, that smile had somehow grown wider.

His eyes flicked involuntarily towards her hips as he remembered the red satin...

There was a familiar sound. There was an impact that surprised him enough that he fell back a step. A dumb realization came over him as he realized that he had dropped his weapon when he had seen the last man under his command gagged with...

Another impact.

He ran a hand up his chest and frowned when it came away red. Red like Faith's...

Impact.

"I'll keep doing this for as long as it takes, Staff Sergeant Richards," a husky feminine voice said with no small amount of amusement.

The world came roaring back. He had been shot, several times. Glancing upwards, he saw his squadmate, now also showing evidence of Faith's impressive shooting skills. And still gagged with...

Impact.

"Okay, okay!" he snapped.

"I guess that means we win," Faith said smugly, lowering her paintball gun. She gave the gun a fond pat; it had been a gift from Roger Watts that very much resembled the FN P90 that seemed to be all the rage for many of the SG teams. The gun was a promise, or the promise of a possibility that she, too, might one day hold such a weapon in that capacity. It was also an extremely effective paintball gun, as Staff Sergeant Richards and the men and women that had made up his team had learned over the last couple of hours.

The Air Force Staff Sergeant that Boyd had recommended for this 'play-date' grumbled.

"Go get Airman James down!" he ordered a nearby man, "and ungag him!"

"Why, you want a taste?"

John Richards went beet red and spluttered before a hand settled on his shoulder.

"Easy there, Dickie," Henry Boyd said with a grin. "Dickie, I don't believe you've actually met our Faith Lehane."

Faith winked at Richards before she turned to say something to the man she'd wrestled in the mud with.

"You, Watts, McLeod, and that she-demon just took out three fire teams," Richards complained sourly, "and even if one of those teams was comprised of cadets..."

Jessica McLeod finally made her way to her commanding officer's side. She had a towel and was trying to wipe dirt and red paint from her face. "Oh, get over it, Dickie, you still got half of us in that fucking ambush."

The Staff Sergeant managed to look somewhat mollified until Faith came back to the conversation among the gradually growing crowd of assembled USAF paintball enthusiasts.

"So dinner on you guys next week at O'Malley's, right?" Jessica McLeod asked, smiling.

There was a round of disgruntled acknowledgment as he and the 11 men and women on his team began to make their way out of the course.

"We should play paintball much more often," Faith said with a wistful tone.

"Where did that rope even come from?" A woman who had been taken out by Boyd early in the game asked with a look of something approaching awe in her face.

"Ah, well, y'know," Faith said, with a coy smile, "you never know when you need to tie a man up." She winked at the woman. "Or when you'd like someone to tie you up, hmm?"

The other woman shook her head and laughed at that and walked away with several of her fellow cadets out of the range.

The man who'd been the recipient of both her applied knowledge of ropes and knots as well as her panties was blushing and wouldn't quite look at Faith or his Staff Sergeant in the eyes.

"I think you broke him," Roger Watts observed, waggling his eyebrows.

Faith smiled.

To Richards, that smile seemed far too feline, or possible shark-like. In his perusal of that smile, he was caught off guard when something soft, and somewhat damp, was placed into his hand. He opened his hand, ignoring the sniggers of Boyd and his team. His mouth went dry and he jerked his head upwards to see Faith already a dozen feet away and making her way to the course entrance.

His face flushed yet again as he stood there holding Faith's bright red, satin panties.

"Sorry, Dickie," Faith called out without bothering to turn around, "they're wet because of your airman, but if you still want that taste..."

Faith's peal of laughter echoed in the trees even after her figure had disappeared from sight.

"And that, Dickie, is Faith," Henry Boyd said in a serene voice, though his dancing eyes betrayed his solemn demeanor.

Roger and Jessica chuckled, shaking their heads at the Staff Sergeant's reaction. They understood; they had all had a 'Faith' moment at some point as they grew to know and befriend the woman that they might travel to other worlds with one day.

"Wow," Richards finally said.

"Wow," the others agreed in unison.

Lorca: The contents of the letter have not yet been fully explained. But an invitation to be involved at some level can be inferred, the addition of this chapter make that somewhat obvious. As for the relationship... *shrug* I don't intend to make the story about the relationship, but it may be a larger part of the story until that relationship has fleshed out.
I have a rule of thumb about these kinds of things: Would I be embarrassed if my mother read this? Writing a story that includes a same sex pairing wouldn't phase her. Writing a story that includes the development of a same sex pairing might get me a raised eyebrow. But writing a story about a same sex pairing would get me the crossed arms and tapping foot of doom. It'll be a fine line and I hope that I stay on the right side that'll provide a better story for you.
Sorentia: I wouldn't expect for the story to go quite so dramatic as that. Keep in mind that I haven't yet fully explained how Faith will be interacting with the Stargate program. Plus, the two years that have passed since the initial meeting without there having been a major incident probably gives this particular military group the benefit of the doubt. At this point, I don't really plan on there being any conflict between the supernatural players and the Stargate program. You'll just have to wait and see who the next big bad is.

Author's Notes: And I'm back! I'm back and I'm better than ever! My previous work schedule has ended and my new one affords me far more time to write. Indeed, the last few hours of my shifts are almost nothing but free time. This chapter was the result of that free time. I'm going to do my best to post at least one chapter a week, but as always, a warning that sometimes it may not be possible. The story will be removed from it's completion status and moved back to In-progress. As previously decided, I intend to continue this saga in this same FanFiction entry, rather than creating a new story for a new part. Just a preference thing.

Just a heads up, but the first couple of chapters are likely to be long and are meant to present backstory and create a foundation for the next stage of Faith's journey. This story is still about Faith, but Buffy will be becoming a more central role in the story, though I'm still working out the details as to how.

I wasn't sure whether the whole Faith gagging a guy with her panties thing was a little much, but it seemed like the kind of outrageous thing she might do and I just ran with the idea.

I'm predicting that this second part of my story will be considerably longer than the first part and will delve into the recent events of many of the BtVS, AtS, and SG-1 characters in the following chapters. There will also be a discussion regarding Faith's evolution in the past two years along with details about the agreement she made at the end of the first part. One could expect that Faith's familiarity with a P90 might be obvious evidence of that. There's a fic on TtH called "Life's Ending, Life's Beginning" by becuzitswrong that is mostly comprised of Buffy going through the Air Force Academy and learning all those Air Force Academy things. I absolutely love that story and I considered doing something similar here but I felt it wouldn't add enough to the overall story.

One of the directions I might lead this story will end up introducing the Stargate Atlantis universe. I'm still considering the idea and have nothing decided yet, but it could be an interesting way to take the story and might be useful to isolate the particular theater this story might develop in

Only one of the named characters in this chapter was made up (and I don't expect him to have any further role in the novel at this time). Henry Boyd, Roger Watts, and Jessica McLeod were all characters from a Stargate novel and possibly mentioned in the tv show itself. Very little is known about most of the other teams' personnel, so I thought SG-10 might be a nice home for Faith. Adding her to SG-1 didn't seem like a good ideal, not with SG-1 being occupied in various ways (which will be discussed in the next few chapters). At this moment, SG-10 knows that Faith is a potential candidate for their team and that she has some powerful backing, but don't know anything about her being the Slayer or the about the supernatural.

A brief blurb on something I mentioned earlier: As far as I know, there is no definitive answer as to how the Slayer lineage passes on. The common theories, from what I know, is that the lineage is directed by the Powers that Be. The other theory is that the power passes to a new recipient due to a combination of genetics (I.e. the Slayer lines) as well as more abstract and possibly random factors. I've always liked the PtB answer, but the existence of the Slayer lines, that the next Slayer could be (judging by history and excluding Buffy) predicted with a high degree of accuracy seems to destroy that notion. Nevertheless, I will include the latter theory while remaining firm in my preference for PtB involvement.

There will be further development of Faith and Buffy's not-quite relationship, though I haven't yet decided how I will do so and at what speed. But there will be definite progress towards that end.