SEAL Team 13 Book One

SEAL Team 13 - Book Two
BUD/s Forever

Rating : M

Summary : Xander thought Sunnydale was Hell on Earth... He’s about to learn that there are worse things that demons.... Seal Instructors.

Disclaimer : BTVS and all other crossovers belong to their owners, not me.

AN : Timelines from various crosses are being altered by a year here, a couple years there, etc to get everyone together where I need them to be... You are warned.

To Book One - Part Three

To next part

Naval Special Warfare Center
Coronado

Xander shivered as he looked over the training facility he’d committed to spending his next twenty six weeks at, and wondered, not for the first time, exactly what he’d gotten himself into. When the President had asked him to sign on with the Teams, Xander had actually gone through an array of different emotions that ranged from awe to terror, with stopovers at incredulity and shock.

He hadn’t known what to say at first, in fact, something the president seemed to understand.

Los Angeles, Two Months Earlier

“Before you tell me know, I want you to understand something,” President Jack Ryan said earnestly, “Team Five, while managing to pull off miracles through sheer guts and moments of brilliance, are not properly trained to conduct operations in this theater of combat. That’s hurt them badly over the last year, but we knew that would happen when we asked them to shoulder the job.”

Xander stiffened, his face tensing, but was halted by Ryan holding up his hand.

“Every man on the teams were told what they were getting into, as best as we understood it ourselves. They fought willingly, knowing what it was worth,” The President said grimly, “And over the last year, the research division that *you* helped setup has been compiling data that we’ve been using to devise the Team Thirteen Project. Last month, I green lighted the project.”

“What are you planning on doing different?” Xander asked, sighing.

“New training from the ground up, we’re mostly taking volunteers from other elite units... not all of them were Navy, actually,” Jack told him, “But we also want to recruit an element from the people like yourself, Mr Harris... who’ve been doing this on their own, and had to learn things the hard way.”

“People like me aren’t eager to trust anyone with power over us, Mr President,” Xander smiled dryly.

“I’m aware of that,” Ryan conceded, “In fact, that’s one reason I want you to enlist. I think you have the capacity to be a great soldier but, perhaps more importantly, I think you understand how a lot of these people think... and maybe you can help us convince them to work with us.”

Xander let out a deep breath, “What are the terms, Sir?”

Coronado, Now

Four Years service, including the six months training time and two years probationary service before he could officially call himself a Seal. Assuming he survived BUD/s. If he didn’t, no harm no foul. He went back to H2 and continued to work as a researcher for the US Government while patrolling Sunnydale.

The problem with that was, quite simply, that Xander didn’t want to fail.

He’d failed at enough things in his life, barely even managing to squeak out of high school in fact. When the US Navy had given him a chance to prove his teachers wrong one year earlier, Xander had grabbed that chance with both hands and clung on grimly despite the fact that he was barely able to keep one step ahead of the people he was helping train.

He was through with being a quitter, the guy who slacked off and no one expected to go anywhere in life.

In the end, that was the reason he’d accepted the president’s offer and joined up for this bit of insanity. It was also why he had spent the last two months flying around the country, personally meeting with other flagged candidates and did his best to convince them to try it as well.

Of course, the first name on his list hadn’t required that he travel very far.

Not far at all.

Chowchilla Prison, Chowchilla California

“Lehane! You’ve got a visitor!”

Faith looked up tiredly from where she was laying back on her bunk. She had the cell all to herself, some early attempts at intimidation from the other inmates had turned violently, though briefly, ugly and it was decided that she shouldn’t be paired with anyone else. When the guard arrived at her cell door, she watched the prisoner warily, though not with the fear many others held.

Lehane hadn’t started any of the trouble she’d been in, and mostly just wanted to be left alone, so despite her obvious threat level, few of the guards were overly anxious around her, though none of them were especially eager to spend time within ten paces either.

You never knew when a prisoner might lose it, some factor you couldn’t see causing them to flip out on you. Imagining what this one could do in that case sent shivers down the guards back as she unlocked the door.

“Visitor, Lehane,” She repeated.

Faith stood up, wondering who it was. Fang showed up occasionally, but he wasn’t due for a while. There was no one else on the outside who gave a damn, or had any reason to give a damn. She just grunted and walked along with the guard toward the visitors room.

Faith was in Maximum security, so she was surprised when she wasn’t led into the carefully segregated security rooms with the ‘unbreakable’ plexiglass shields and intercom communication. Instead she was led to one of the private rooms that was reserved for talking with Counsel.

“Just knock on the door and we’ll unlock it,” The guard said to the man who was looking out the barred window.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” He said, turning around, eliciting a gap from Faith.

“What the hell are you doing here, Xander?” She asked as the door closed.

He eyed the cuffs on her wrists and ankles with wry amusement, drawing an irate glare from her.

“Oh, here to laugh at the shackles, huh? I get it.”

“No, actually I’m laughing that anyone thinks those will really hold you,” Xander replied as he took a seat and motioned to the other one for her. “Have a seat... I have business to talk.”

She sat down warily, eyeing him uncertainly, “We don’t have any business.”

“We’ve got all kinds,” He replied darkly, rubbing his throat pointedly, “Some of it unfinished, I might add... but this isn’t between us. I’m here as a representative of the US Government.”

Her eyes widened, a smile curling her lips into a sneer, “You?”

“Me.” He replied flatly, sliding a paper across to her.

“What’s this?” She asked, picking it up and frowning at it.

“Your conditional release, if you want it.”

Faith dropped the paper like it was made of red hot steel, eyes snapping up to bore into Xander’s. “How?”

“I’ve got pull you don’t know about, Faith.”

Her eyes dropped back down to the paper, then she reluctantly pushed it away, whispering softly. “I can’t.”

“Why?” Was all he asked.

“I belong here.” Faith admitted a moment later, only her iron firm control keeping the sheen of moisture from her eyes.

“Faith, you and I know that this place only holds you as long as you choose for it to hold you,” Xander said softly, his voice then hardening, “So this isn’t punishment. This is self flagellation... If that’s what gets you hot, fine by me, but do it elsewhere.”

Her eyes burned as she jerked upright, knocking her chair back, “What the hell do you know about it!?”

“I know that while you’re in here, there are people dying on the front line of a war you can do some good in.” He returned, just as hotly, “And if you want to make up for your mistakes, it’s time to come back to the fold.”

She turned away, kicking the fallen chair out of her way. “You don’t get it.”

“No, *you* don’t get it,” Xander slammed his hand down on the table, jerking her back around. “This isn’t a free pass, Faith. You want out of here, you’re going to work for it.”

“What are you talking about?” She asked warily.

“This is a conditional release, not a god damn pardon,” he growled, “You don’t follow it’s restrictions to the letter, we throw you back in a hole... one that’ll hold a Slayer, I promise you. But as long as you do, then you get to breath the outside air... and really earn back some of the self respect you used to have.”

Faith hesitated, looking down at the paper, “What do I have to do?”

So he had his first name crossed off the list.

It wasn’t a long list, not really, but the names on it could potentially make or break the newly forming team. Some of them were ‘Specials’, the new Navy designation for enhanced humans, some of them were merely formidable humans who’d stared into the abyss long enough for it stare back.

The President and Admiral Chegwidden had decided to waive the normal restrictions to recruiting women into the Teams.

Neither man was especially happy with it, and had actively fought him when he tried to get Faith’s name on the list. Xander hadn’t budged however, because while he knew damn well why they were resistant, he also knew something that they hadn’t yet considered.

“I’m telling you, Sir, Mr President,” Xander growled, “I won’t serve with this group any other way.”

“Mr Harris, I’m sure that many women are capable of handling this type of duty, but our concerns go beyond the women themselves.” Chegwidden replied.

“I get that,” Xander said seriously, “believe me... I get that. It’s about the guys too... A Man who wouldn’t blink at being hurt, or watching a comrade hurt, would break in a second when seeing a woman tortured. That about it?”

The two men hesitated, and it was the Admiral who finally nodded. “That’s not the full extent of the reasoning, Mr Harris, but it’s close enough.”

“Yeah... I get it.” Xander said wearily, “But here’s what you need to get... I’ve looked at your list here and read the dossiers, and I’m telling you, if you’re planning on recruiting people with abilities like this... You can’t afford to overlook half your talent pool. People with these talents are rare enough already... half of damn near nothing is not acceptable.”

Both men, though the President especially, looked miserable as they considered that, but they finally nodded in reluctant agreement.

“Very well,” Jack said, “But they have to keep up with the full requirements of the Team.”

“Agreed.” Xander said simply.

Chegwidden sighed, “In that case... I have another few names for the list, perhaps.”

San Francisco

Xander could learn to hate some aspects of his new job, he decided as he watched the funeral procession move slowly past, the person he was supposed to contact a grieving young woman walking at the front.

The service was touching, though it held the tinge of meaningless words that echoed familiarly in Xander’s ears. He’d heard too many that sounded just like that.

Dearly beloved, yadda yadda yadda...

Great sorrow, etc and so forth...

Finally at rest, and what a load.

Xander stood through the generic service given by a man who didn’t really know the departed, didn’t truly care, and had no clue how they had really died. When it was over, he waited as the gathered people slowly drifted away, then walked over to the lone woman who stood over her father’s grave.

“Sarah Baily?” He asked softly, knowing it was her.

“I don’t want whatever you’re selling.” She said coldly, her voice actually sending a chill down Xander’s spine.

He could practically feel the shift in the world around him as she spoke, and elected to be careful in his choice of words.

“I know how you feel,” He said softly, “I lost my best friend to vampires... lost a lot of friends to demons over the years.”

She snapped her head around, her dark blond hair swinging as a wind swept up and whistled past them, “Who are you?”

He handed her a card, “Someone who can offer you help and support... and people who’ve experienced the same problems you have.”

“No one has the same problems I have,” She said, eyes flaring.

“Maybe not, but some are pretty close,” He said, “I represent the US Navy, we’d like you to become part of a new group we’re commissioning.”

“To do what?” She asked bitterly.

“To make sure that other girls don’t bury their parents before it’s time,” Xander replied, then shook his head, “You don’t have to answer now... Indoc doesn’t start for a couple months... If you do come, It’ll be tough... if they do it right, it’ll be the toughest thing you’ve ever done... but if you make it through, you’ll be better for it.”

Then he turned and began to walk away, pausing a moment later to turn back, “Sarah?”

She looked up from the card, and he looked into her eyes, “What?”

“I really am sorry for your loss.”

Sarah Baily nodded dully, hand closing around the card as she turned back to the fresh grave of her father, and the only marginally older one beside it that contained her mother.

They were scattered across the country, the people the Admiral asked him to approach, and after reading their files Xander could easily understand why Chegwidden wanted them so badly. He also understood why he wasn’t sending regular recruiters after them, most of them reacted badly to authority, which made Xander wonder if any of them would make it through Seal Training.

It was a fine line, marked by three boundaries instead the normal two. To do the job Team Thirteen needed, a recruit had to be independent enough to think and react independently, yet flexible enough to answer to authority and put their trust in the people working around them.

Trust was a hard commodity along the third line, the line that was drawn in blood and power. Experience in the dark side of the world demanded a cost for survival, trust often being the first payment made, normally in blood.

Sarah Baily seemed like she was perhaps too far gone now to be of use to the Teams, but Xander hoped he was wrong. She had power aplenty, and that could keep other fighters alive.

He thought about that a lot on his flight up to Seattle.

Seattle

The Agency was a crap hole.

If it weren’t for the fact that somehow they’d managed to acquire the talents of one or two truly unique individuals, they’d be less than a joke. As it was, even with those people in their pocket, there wasn’t an organization in the US Government that wanted anything to do with The Official or any of the people he touched.

Xander had the paperwork to change that, if the people involved agreed to it.

“Mr Harris,” The Fat Man said, smiling thinly as he gestured to a seat, “It’s not often I meet with someone with such... good references.”

Xander shrugged, eyes working the room as he tried to decide if the Official and the man, Ebert, were the only ones in the room. Impossible to say, though perhaps not for long.

“So what can I do for you, Mr Harris?”

“I’m here to discuss one of your people,” Xander replied, “And make him an offer.”

“Poaching then?” The Official smiled, settling back in his chair, “That’s not very polite.”

Xander snorted, “I’ve read your files, polite is the last thing I’d be to you. Blackmailing a man into working for you... If it were up to me I’d toss your fat ass out of the window here and talk to Fawkes alone.”

The Official lost the smile, and a sound like a strangled snort of laughter filled the room.

Xander smiled, “So, Mr Fawkes is in the room. I was wondering.”

A sound like falling glass sounded from across the room, and a shocked looking man appeared from nowhere, “How do you know me?”

“I’ve read your entire file, Darien,” Xander said, “Take a seat. You have more of a say in this than the fat man anyway.”

Darien smirked at the Official as the man scowled at Xander, and took a seat.

“Whoever you are, not matter how good your references, you don’t have the jurisdiction to come in here and try to poach my people,” The Official blustered.

“Normally, you’d be entirely correct... But the fact that you’ve been blackmailing Darien here shifts the lines slightly,” Xander replied, handing over a sheet of paper, “Signed by Jack Ryan, in case you’re wondering.”

The Official looked at the paper and paled, noting numerous charges listed against him.

“Now, just so we can be nice about this, if you agree to turn over the formula for the Counter Agent to Mr Fawkes, I have these papers...” Xander handed another set to Ebert, who carried them to the Official.

“T... this increases my budget by ten times...” The Official murmured in shock.

“Wait a second here,” Fawkes held up his hands, “Why are you giving me the Counteragent?”

Xander shrugged, “Well... honestly? The Counteragent is a poor leash anyway. What the Official hasn’t told you is that there’s a reason why they severely restrict your doses... Your body is going to build up a resistance to it within a couple years at most.”

The Official glared again at that, but Xander ignored him, “To live, you need a full cure, Darien. And we’re willing to fund the research toward one in exchange for you signing on with a group we’re establishing.”

“What kind of group?”

“Military... To fight people, and things, that normal groups can’t.” Xander told him. “If you’re interested, we’ll pour everything possibly into the cure... but you sign up for a four year term.”

“If I live that long,” Darien replied dryly.

“Hey, if the Navy wants your services for four years, I guess they’d better find that cure then, huh?” Xander smiled.

In Denver, another conversation was taking place, between two different people.

“Detention, Huh?”

The kid looked up, eyes board, “Yeah, what’s it to you?”

“Quite a way to fall,” The man said, lips twitching, “From a full bird Colonel to a high school punk kid who can’t stay out of trouble?”

John O’Neill’s eyes narrowed and he tensed, “Who the hell are you??”

“Sorry,” The man in front of him extended a hand, “Ryback. Casey Ryback.”

John’s eyes widened at that as he recognized the name. Ryback was a legend in the close knit circle of Special Operators, a man known as much by his enemies as by his friends. Jack, no John, had never met the man, but they had still ran in the same circles.

“So what’s a Navy puke doing in Denver?” He asked sarcastically, covering up the brief moment of surprise and unsettled thoughts.

“Just looking in on a snot nosed punk kid who can’t stay out of trouble,” Casey replied evenly, taking a seat across from John. “Been happening a lot lately, hasn’t it?”

John shrugged defensively, “What business is it of yours?”

“I’m wondering if maybe you’re just a little bored with playing the dumb kid, chasing after jail bait... maybe you might like to get back in the game...”

Ok, that caused a little spike of interest. He’d just ‘turned’ seventeen according to his new paperwork, and he’d been debating reenlistment for several months already. Trouble was, the last thing he wanted to do, was wind up in his own chain of command.

Even so, The Navy?

He hadn’t sunk THAT low.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” He smirked at Ryback, “What could you swabbies possibly offer me?”

“A shot at the Teams,” Casey said softly.

Jack hesitated, he had to admit, that was about as good as it got, at least in the Navy. “So?”

“And a shot at things that make your Goa’uld look downright friendly... things that live here on earth, hiding in the shadows.” Casey replied.

John blinked, “There’s no such thing.”

“No such thing as aliens, either... Imagine what else in the history books might have a grain of truth...” Casey replied, standing up, “I’ll leave you to your ‘Detention’.”

Before he turned, he dropped a card on the table, “If you change your mind... Here’s my number.”

Then Casey turned and walked out, pausing at the door, “Hey, O’Neill?”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“I promise you one thing...”

“What’s that?”

“It won’t be boring.”

Then Casey walked out, leaving seventeen year old John ‘Jack’ O’Neill staring at a card with black lettering that held nothing but a phone number.

NSA HQ, Washington DC

The group of men strode through the highly secured area of the NSA as if they owned the place which, in a way, one of them did. People melted away from them, at first from the men with with sunglasses and dark suits, until they saw the man in the middle. Then they just dove for the sidelines as the man stepped up to the director’s office and walked in without knocking, while his guards took up station on either side.

“Hello Lou,” He said with a smile.

The black woman behind the desk glanced up, irritated until she recognized him, then she instantly let out a curse, “Jesus Christ!”

“Please, Lou, call me Jack,” President Ryan chuckled as he took a seat across from her.

“Jack... I mean, Mr President... what the hell are you doing here, Sir?”

“I’m here to talk about your fair haired boy,” Jack admitted.

“Jake?” Director Beckett asked, frowning, “What about him?”

Jack looked mildly embarrassed, “Well, to be honest, There’s a group forming up now that want to poach him from you.”

“Jack,” Her pen clattered as she snapped it down on the desk, “We’ve had this discussion.”

“Yes, and if it were any other group, I’d tell them to go to hell...” Jack Ryan told her honestly, “But as it turns out, I put his name into the hat for this one myself.”

She blinked, staring at him for a moment, “Mr President, with all due respect, are you completely out of your mind!?”

“I wish I were, Lou.” Jack sighed, “What’s your thoughts on Mr Foley?”

“He needs training.” She replied flatly, “which is precisely why I don’t want him running around with someone who’s just going to shove Jake at whatever problem crops up because of the nanites.”

Jack smiled, “Well you just made my case, Lou.”

Louise Beckett had a sick feeling in her gut as the President said that, suddenly feeling like she’d walked into a trap with her eyes closed and still didn’t see the bars that had snapped up around her. Just like the last time she’d talked with Jack Ryan.

Jake Foley looked around, confused, “Ok I’m here, what’s going on?”

Agent Kyle Duarte shrugged, looking over at the younger man, “Someone wants to talk to you.”

“Well it better be important,” Doctor Diane Hughes replied snippily, “We’re scheduled for a complete diagnostic this morning...”

Jake mouthed the word ‘thankyou’ to Duarte, rolling his eyes.

“I suppose you can decide for yourself how important it is, Doctor,” Lou said as she walked into the room with a man just behind her.

“Holy shit!” Jake said in shock, recognizing the man, “I mean... Sorry... well...”

He paused, frowning, “No, I’m going with Holy shit... Sir.”

“Jake!” Diane screamed, aghast. “You can’t curse at the President!”

Jack Ryan chuckled, “That’s quite alright, I’ve been known to curse a time or two myself.”

“Yeah but... You’re the President...” Diane replied, then her eyes grew wide as saucers, “Oh my god... I’m arguing with the President.”

While the doctor tried not to curl into a ball in an effort to hide, Lou turned to Jake, “President Ryan is here with an offer for Jake.”

“Offer?” Jake grew nervous as Agent Duarte stiffened, looking suddenly alert.

“There’s a new group being established,” Ryan replied, “They’re going to have a few people very much like you, Mr Foley...”

“Like... Me?”

“There are other people like Jake?” Diane asked, eyes like saucers again.

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Kyle muttered.

“There are,” Jack confirmed, “Not many... and, to my knowledge, none precisely like Mr Foley... but he isn’t the only person on the planet with abilities that exist beyond human norms.”

“W... what does this have to do with me?” Jake asked nervously.

“The Navy is creating a new group that will include some people like yourself,” Jack offered, “A small handful, but some from what I’m led to understand... One, anyway, that’s confirmed.”

“Someone...” Jake shook his head, “Navy?”

“That’s correct,” Jack said, “And it brings me to the second point... You’ve done some miraculous things, Mr Foley, but one thing that your superiors here agree on is that you still need training.”

Jake flushed, looking simultaneously irritated and embarrassed. Everyone kept saying that he needed training, always more training, that he wasn’t really ready for field work. He’d been in the field for a year, damn it! Well, eight months, but still...

“Makes you angry, doesn’t it?” The President asked, knowingly, “Everything you’ve done, and you still don’t really measure up...”

“That is not true!” Kyle Duarte snapped, then flushed, “Sir...”

Jake looked over at Kyle in surprise. He’d never reacted like that before.

The president, though, didn’t look surprised or offended by the outburst. “I’m just making a point, Agent Duarte. The fact is that Jake is not only playing catch up on his abilities, but also on the full training Agents normally receive. What little you’ve been able to cram in between actual missions and assignments hasn’t exactly been up to the standards you’d normally insist on before an agent sees field duty, has it?”

Kyle grimaced, looking like the president was yanking his teeth, “no.”

“No. It couldn’t,” Jack answered, “That’s why I’m making this offer.”

“What is the offer, precisely,” Lou asked quietly.

“A four year commitment, two years of which will be spent largely in training. BUD/s to begin with, then HALO work, and other specialty courses. The final two years will be with the Teams doing missions that, I have to warn you, have generally killed forty percent of the operators we’ve sent to handle them... It’s dangerous work, but when it’s done there’s no one on the planet who’d argue that you need more training before you’re allowed to do field work, Jake.”

“Buds?” Jake blinked.

“Basic Underwater Demolition Slash Seal training,” Kyle spoke up, “He wants you to try for the Seal Teams.”

“Oh wow...” Jake looked stunned.

As much as Kyle hated to admit it, BUD/s might be exactly what Jake needed. The kid tended to breeze through things until he didn’t, which made it very difficult to design a training program for him. He’d hit humps in the oddest areas, sometimes completely screwing up weeks of training programs because they’d never expected him to mess up where he did.

BUD/s was one of the most grueling training programs around, and it might be enough to even push Jake to his physical limits. Especially if they were already dealing with people like Jake, they might be able to push him even harder.

That did bring up another question though.

“What if he can’t make it?” Kyle asked softly.

“No harm, no foul,” Ryan replied, “If he DORs, he comes back here if he likes. Even gets to keep the signing bonus.”

“Signing bonus?” Jake blinked.

Jack smiled, “We’re authorizing twenty five thousand.”

“Dollars??” Jake asked, incredulously.

Jack looked over at him, “Jake... I want you to think about this. This is not a safe job, even with your abilities... the people and things you’ll be thrown up against are going to be stronger than you. Faster than you. More powerful than you. There’s a reason why we’re creating this team, and there’s a reason why we’re approaching people like yourself to be on it.”

Jake was silent, obviously thinking, but Doctor Hughes wasn’t.

“Well he can’t go!” She blurted, then blushed as everyone stared at her, “I mean... He needs to be monitored. The Nanites...”

“That’s true, Mr President,” Lou said, “The long term effects still aren’t known.”

Jack nodded, “I’m aware of that... Full medical coverage would be included, of course... We’d even invite Doctor Hughes to join. Her experience would be in great demand by the group.”

“It would?” Hughes blinked, “I would?”

Lou groaned, “Damn it Jack, you’re poaching my best researcher as well as the only nanite enabled agent on the planet??”

“Sorry Lou,” Jack smiled, “but I promise you, I wouldn’t do this if it weren’t vitally important to national security.”

She didn’t look any happier.

“Look at it this way,” Jack offered, “In four years, when their contract runs out, I’ll give you first bid on the services of any members of the team that don’t re-up... Including Jake here. Just think about all those finely trained agents who are used to working with or against people just as powerful as Jake here.”

Director Beckett looked suddenly intrigued.

Jack turned back to Jake, “But it’s your decision, Son. No one is making this call for you.”

“I... I don’t know...”

“You can take your time,” Jack offered, “Two months before they start... Think about it. That much, is an order.”

Jake looked up, perplexed, but realized that the President was grinning at him and he smiled hesitantly back. “Yes Sir.”

New York

Dade Murphy pulled off his uniform cap, tossing it down on the table as he dropped the mail on the table and slumped into a chair. Another day, another dollar, even if he was just working at Burger King.

He filtered through the mail, immediately shredding the envelope from Kate at MIT, reading the words through twice before setting it down. He felt a pang of jealousy as he read about her work there, the things she was seeing, that he couldn’t. His second arrest, while on probation, for hacking had ended any thoughts of getting into a place like MIT.

They didn’t have much use for a felon, even if he had gotten off with probation again when Ellings Minerals agreed not to press charges against he and his friends because of their help stopping the damage caused by ‘The Plague’.

He quickly filtered through the rest of the mail, stopping and staring at the last one, puzzled.

He flipped it over a couple times, then looked at the logo again and frowned another time. Finally he ripped it open and began to read as one thought floated through his mind.

A few moments later, he was still staring in shock when his mother came in and asked him how his day was.

Los Angeles

“Samuel Evan Winchester?”

Sam didn’t look up from where he was cleaning off the bone white finish of the coffin, applying a bit of polish before he continued wiping, “You got him, what’s it to you?”

“I’d like a minute of your time, Mr Winchester.”

Sam glanced up, then away again before he suddenly froze and looked slowly back up. <Oh Holy hell... why do I have a Navy Admiral looking for me? Dad... Dean, what the hell did you do now??>

“I uh...” Sam muttered cleaning his hands off, “I’m working here.”

“If you could take a couple minutes, I won’t hold you up for long.”

“Yeah... sure,” Sam said, calling out to the next room, “Hey, Ramos!”

“Yo!”

“You wanna cover for me for a minute?”

“You got it, Sammy!”

Sam nodded outside, “Let’s walk then.”

“Thank you, Mr Winchester.”

“A full scholarship to Stanford... Very impressive, Mr Winchester,” Admiral Chegwidden said, his tone actually sounding impressed.

“Yeah, well, thanks,” Sam said, “but I don’t think you’re here to talk about me becoming a lawyer.”

AJ half smiled, “Oh, I don’t know. I’m a Lawyer, the law has always been my second passion.”

“Second? What’s the first?”

“The Navy.”

“Oh.”

“I’m here to try and convince you to sign up, just so you know.”

Sam choked, turning it into a coughing fit as he tried to control his breathing. “Pardon?”

“Not as farfetched as you seem to think,” AJ said as he got control of himself, “Not given your peculiar family background.”

Sam froze, his choking ending as did his attempts at breathing.

“Yes, we’re quite aware of your family... business. That’s why I’m here, in fact. If your father hadn’t been so hard to find, we would have invited him into the intelligence division a year ago,” AJ went on.

“The government is...”

“Hunting ghosts, monsters, demons, and vampires.” AJ said it aloud.

“I’m out of that life.” Sam said, “I’ve got a girl, a full ride at Stanford... Why would I want back in?”

“From what I’ve been told by another hunter like yourself... Yes, Mr Winchester, there are others like you,” The Admiral said, “No one gets ‘out’. Once you’ve seen the things that are out there, you’re marked. I don’t know if I believe him or not, but I know that I couldn’t walk away.”

Sam rubbed his forehead, “I lost... gave up everything normal in my life for my family’s quest... I want some of it back now.”

“Understandable... but, just for the record, Mr Winchester, I’m not talking about you giving up anything. You sign with us, we’ll cover your Scholarship, pay you a signing bonus, plus salary and bonuses for combat, danger, and supernatural service... And you won’t work alone, there will be about a hundred and twenty other men, and a few women, ready to back your play in the field.”

Sam looked around, “That’s... very tempting, Admiral... I just...”

Admiral Chegwidden handed him a card, “Here. You don’t need to answer today... there’s time to think about it.”

He nodded slowly, accepting the card.

“Something I was told by another young man in your position, Mr Winchester,” AJ said, catching Sam’s attention again, “When he was fighting alone, he told me he used to wonder where the Government was... why no one seemed to be doing anything. Well, we’re here now, and this is what we’re doing. And we want you to be part of it.”

Sam nodded slowly, looking over his shoulder to the mortuary where he worked to pay for little things like food and rent while he waited for his first semester to start. “Look, I’ve got to get back to work...”

The Admiral nodded, “Think about it, Mr Winchester.”

He nodded, “Yeah... I will.”

Present Day
Coronado

Xander ran his hand through the stubble that remained of his hair, a feeling of deja vu passing through him, though he knew he’d never had his hair anywhere near this short before. <Flash back to Halloween,> he thought in amusement.

Off to his side, Faith didn’t look as amused.

She actually looked rather sick, in fact.

Xander chuckled, catching her attention.

“Oh real funny, X.” She grumbled, stepping up to him, “I suppose this was your idea?”

He put his hands up, smirking at her, “Navy issue brush cut *F*. Looks very...Chemo on you.”

She snorted, shaking her head as she looked around at all the people milling around. “There’s a lot of people here...”

Xander nodded seriously, “Yeah... A lot of people.”

And there were a lot of people. What looked like a couple hundred at least, most of them dressed like he and Faith were now, in black BDUs, combat boots, and wearing proud new brush cuts identical to the ones he and Faith now had.

“I’ve... never been around this many people, X,” Faith admitted, a hint of nervousness in her voice.

“Ditto,” Xander replied, shrugging, “Hey... It’ll be ok. Just remember, these people... are here to do the same job you are. No more going it alone, huh?”

“Yeah...” Faith said softly.

“Alright! Move it over this way please!”

The men and few women shuffled over, following directions as they were sorted out and put into groups.

“The groups you’re now in are your boat crew! You will work with these people, you will eat with these people, and you will sleep with these people... what little sleep we let you have!” The speaker snarled out over the general noise, “I am Navy Master Chief Urgayle! I and the people you see and hear giving you orders right now are the left hand of God himself to you for the next six months. Fuck with us and you will pay the price.”

Xander and Faith were shuffled apart, each being pushed into separate boat crews by the instructors as the groups were being formed.

“The lady on my left is Lieutenant O’Neil,” Urgayle went on, “The man on my right is Master Chief Casey Ryback! Lieutenant Dale Hawkins is currently organizing your worthless butts into something halfway decent that won’t disgrace this man’s navy. If any one of us or any other *real* Navy man or woman on this base gives you an order, you don’t question, you don’t comment, you just DO it!”

The groups finally got separated up and Xander found himself standing with the eleven other men who were to make up his boat crew as the instructors stepped back and checked them out.

“Master Chief Urgayle!”

“Aye Commander!”

James Curran stepped out in front of them, looking over the group, “Are the recruits ready to begin?”

“As ready as this sorry lot is ever going to be, Sir.”

“Well then you better get started, Master Chief.”

“Aye Aye Sir!” Urgayle bellowed, “Move out! One and a half mile run!”

The instructors moved in, shouting and pushing the crews out and down a dirt track.

“Move it! Faster!”

Xander started to run, thinking calmly to himself, <One and half miles... no sweat.>

“Get them started off, Commander?”

“Yes Sir, Admiral,” Curran said, looking off down the road where the recruits had jogged out of sight.

Chegwidden nodded, “First impressions?”

“Lot of good men in there, Sir,” Curran replied, “But some strong personalities too.”

“What about the Special Team?”

“We put Foley, Lehane, O’Neill, and Bailey together with some of the guys we drew in from military units. Couple of the Initiative boys, that Ranger that apparently got lost and showed up here, and a few Navy boys looking for a challenge.”

Chegwidden snorted, “Think you can give it to them?”

“Oh, yes Sir.”

“Good.”

Faith looked around as they let her stop, noting that the only other woman around was wheezing hard, and so were a couple of the guys. They were all tough, though, she had to admit. She was feeling fine, no stress of course. A Mile and a half in eleven minutes didn’t even wind her. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to wind one of the other guys either.

He was sort of dweeby cute, lot like X used to be actually, and standing around looking fascinated by everything around him.

Speaking of X, his group had come in just behind hers and he was looking pretty relaxed himself. He’d changed a lot since she’d given him a roll, that was obvious. He looked pretty relaxed, actually, like he was at home or something.

She couldn’t help but get a little jumpy, what with everyone yelling at her and each other, but at least she didn’t think they could do much to push her limits physically. Being a Slayer kicked all kinds of ass.

“Hey,” Faith heard someone say, and she turned to see a young kid looking at her.

“Hey,” She returned.

He offered his hand, “Name’s John. Just figured I’d introduce myself around while we’ve got a minute.”

“Faith.” She said, taking the hand.

He nodded, “nice to meet you, Faith.”

The mile and half run apparently felt like another to the instructors, who quickly turned the groups around and ran them all back, this time up the sandy beach. By the time they slowed to a stop near the point they had begun at, Xander’s legs were burning from the extra exertion the soft sand put on them.

He didn’t have a chance to recover, though, before Urgayle had his boat crew down in the sand, faces buried in the beach as they did pushups.

After fifty Xander’s arms were killing him, but the master Chief kept them at it until the last boat crew jogged in, one of the men limping from a sprained ankle. An instructor checked him out quickly, pronouncing it a minor sprain, and the Master Chief told them all to form up.

Xander jumped up, falling in with his crew, risking a glance over to where Faith was standing with hers. They were the first team in, most of them looking barely worked up at all, despite the fact that they’d already been doing pushups when his boat crew arrived. Faith herself looked great, a little flushed but in that glowing way a woman got when she was refreshed.

It made him acutely aware of the sand covering his face where it had stuck to his sweat as he did his pushups. The guy next to him was in worse shape, but was still standing straight and determined, so that was good. The rest of the crew looked just slightly winded.

Xander had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t going to get any better though.

“Crew five!” Casey Ryback growled, “With me.”

Xander turned with his crew and jogged after the Master Chief, coming to a stop near a length of telephone pole that was about twenty feet long.

“What are you waiting for? Pick it up!”

Xander shuffled quickly into the middle of the group, grabbing the massive pole, then they all heaved until they got it up to shoulder height and held it braced there.

“Over!”

They heaved the log, almost losing it when the guy in front of Xander had his hands slip along the wood because they were coated in sand. The rest groaned, but caught it up as he got his hands back in place, and the log went over until it was resting on the other shoulder.

“Again!”

Another grunt and the log went up smoothly this time, and over the top until it came to rest on the other side.

Casey walked around, “Over your head and hold it!”

They grunted, and the pole went up, their arms straightening out as they tried to keep the heavy weight balanced above their heads.

“Ninety seconds starting... now!”

Faith smirked, the heavy log was a featherweight to her. She could probably have hefted the whole thing herself, though keeping it balanced would have been a bitch. With the whole group lifting, it was nothing at all.

“Are you smirking at me, *Convict*!?”

Faith started.

“Oh yes, I know who and what you are,” Master Chief Urgayle snarled, coming out to her face. “To think that my beloved navy has *stooped* so fucking low as to bring gutter trash like you into it!”

Faith’s eyes flared, but she held her position, keeping the log in place.

“I don’t know what the brass were thinking, bringing not one, but two more split tails into my world,” He growled, “and one of them a fucking convict! You’re going back to prison, bitch...”

The anger dulled out, and Faith’s eyes shifted, looking down.

Urgayle paused, walking around the team for another minute before swooping back in on Faith, “You’re going to quit, bitch!”

Faith shook her head.

“What’s that!? What did you say, split tail!? Speak up! Or am I not worth talking to!?”

Faith clenched her teeth, “Not gonna quit.”

Urgayle sneered, clearly showing his teeth, “You will address me properly, *convict*!”

There was no immediate response, so Urgayle went on.

“You will address me as Master Chief! Do you under stand me, Convict!?”

Faith nodded.

“Then fucking say it!”

“Yes Master Chief!”

Urgayle nodded, “Not too bright, but I see you can be trained... to do some things anyway. You been trained before, Convict? Some dyke in prison get you trained, maybe!?”

Faith’s nostrils flared, her eyes swinging to bore into the Master Chief, “No.”

“No what, Convict!?”

“No... Master Chief.”

“Maybe I don’t believe you, Convict!” He growled, right in her face, small amounts of spittle peppering her face. “I think some dyke got you trained real good, Convict... put your face down in her snatch until you...”

Faith suddenly snarled, letting go of the log as she spun on the Master Chief, “You don’t fucking know me, *Master Chief*.”

Urgayle easily ducked back out of her reach as she took her first blind swing, eyes lighting up as the rest of the team suddenly grunted under the application of the log’s full weight. They tried to keep it in place, but the sudden shift in weight and balance took them by surprise and the log rolled over and fell to the sand.

Faith half turned at the sound as Urgayle watched her, when she turned back he just sneered, “You just let your crew down, Convict.”

Then he pointed to another log, one a lot shorter but much thicker around. “All of you! Misery needs company!”

Faith glared daggers at the Master Chief as the crew jogged past her, but he just sneered at her.

“Don’t you look at me with bedroom eyes, Convict, you’re not good enough for me. Now are you going to let your crew down again? Or do you want to quit? Just walk up the beach and ring that bell, bitch... I understand they’ve got a nice dank cell waiting just for you.”

Faith seethed, but finally turned and joined the rest of the crew.

He was dying.

That was the only thing it could be, Dade decided as he counted past a hundred pushups, barely able to think straight as he heard the instructor yelling at him in the distance.

He’d spent most of the two months since he’d received the invitation doing nothing but training in one way or another, working through Basic Training and doing PT every day, and he was still dying after just a couple hours of the stuff they had him doing here.

Not for the first time, he wondered how he managed to get himself hooked into this, but the money seemed too good, as well as the chance to clear his record once and for all. Four years hadn’t seemed too bad, not when compared to forty flipping burgers or working tech support for minimum wage.

And now he was dying.

There were guys all around him, though, doing the same thing and they weren’t dying.

He was aching, sand was coating his face and hands, as well as his clothes and he felt like his arms were going to fall off.

Suddenly a voice was screaming his name, and Dade shook his head as he focused in on it.

“Who gave you permission to stop!?” The female voice snarled.

Dade looked up, face confused. Stop? When did he stop?

Then he realized that he had stopped.

<Shit!> He thought, pushing off the beach sand again.

“Get your feet apart!” She kicked at his ankles, jarring Dade as he kept moving.

Another boot to his gut, light but hard enough to hurt, shocked the air out of him as she snarled again.

“Put that pretty ass in the air, Sailor! Who taught you to do pushups!?”

Dade tried to think of an answer, but she was already moving on, planting her foot on his back. “Are you planning to give up on your first day?? Is that it? You want to quit??”

Dade shook his head, remembering Basic, “Ma’am, No Ma’am!”

“Ten more!”

Admiral AJ Chegwidden watched from a dune as the instructors moved through the ranks of the trainees, each using their own methods to push the men, and women, as hard as they could be pushed. Some of them were taking it well, some always did. AJ wondered if they’d lose any to a DOR, Dropout On Request, in the first day or not.

It wasn’t unknown for an otherwise tough man to lose spirit during the abuse one received during BUD/s, even during the indoctrination phase. AJ rather thought that any losses this early would be light this time, though. Many of these men were already veterans of other special forces units, some were hunters who knew what lay in the dark, and the rest all shared at least one thing in common.

Not one of them had yet learned how to quit.

AJ knew that the program would teach some of them, probably most of them, before it was done, but he also rather thought that the percentage of graduates would be rather high this time.

That thought in mind, he turned his attention to where Mr Harris was shifting one of the sections of telephone pole with his boat crew. The young man looked good, for a Seal trainee at any rate. He was dirty and sweating, the only clean patches of skin on him were where the sweat had washed the sand off. But he didn’t look worn yet, didn’t even look like he’d begun to hit his stride.

Xander and his crew let the log go and it hit the sand beside them with a screeching thunk as it slid against the sand and came to a solid stop.

Casey let them shift their limbs for a few seconds before nodding to the, “Obstacle course. Doubletime!”

They groaned a bit, but took off as a group, with Casey following behind at an easy jog.

As they left the beach, Xander noticed Faith’s group struggling with a brutally thick log that left them barely any room to each get a grip on it. Faith was standing at the end, stoically staring straight ahead as Master Chief Urgayle screamed in her face.

He winced, but neither said or did anything as Casey ran them up and over the dune hill toward the obstacle course.

Old Misery wavered in the air above their heads as the crew huddled tightly together, trying to keep their hands braced on the immensely heavy log.

Darien Fawkes was straining more than most of them, cept maybe the young woman who’d introduced herself as Sarah. Sweat was pouring down his face and arms, and a familiar tingle surprised him into looking up just in time to see his hands disappear under a coating of Quicksilver.

<hell!> The former thief groaned, trying to focus on turning the gland off, finally succeeding and causing a cascade of the drying particles to rain down around him.

He grunted, shifting his feet as his chest pressed into the back of the man in front of him, and the man behind pressed hard into him in turn.

“Give me two minutes!” Urgayle shouted, his face only inches from Faith’s up front, “Two minutes with old misery above your head and I’ll let you go back to your nice light chunk of telephone pole! Just two minutes! Come on... Hold it!”

John O’Neill shoveled the steaming hot food into his mouth as he looked around the table at the other people in his crew. They were an interesting bunch, to say the least. There was one kid, not much older than he looked, who went by the name Foley. There was something about that guy, he’d managed to pull through the day without even looking winded, even though he was as scrawny as John himself was.

That was something he mourned, to be honest, the layers of lean muscle he’d packed on over his years of service. Though, he had to admit, he’d never be able to make it through a few months of this shit if he were still fifty year old Jack O’Neill.

Most of the other guys in the crew were obviously professional soldiers, mostly navy applicants, but surprisingly there was an Army Ranger in the mix, and a couple guys who seemed to be from other army programs, through they didn’t talk about it much. The general talk going around was that they’d gotten wind that this was some kind of ultra-elite group, and they’d come running as much for the challenge as for anything else.

The Seals had a reputation, so when they started whispering about some new group being made up of *elite* Seals, people paid attention. John knew that the Seals were tough bastards, he’d known a few here and there in his years of service, and he knew that they had the second highest dropout rate of any special service group.

He smiled tightly to himself as he ate, of course, his own PJs had the highest.

His smile disappeared, though as he considered the events of the day. Urgayle had it in for one of the women on the crew, Faith, he remembered. It was already starting to get difficult to remember she had a name that wasn’t ‘convict’. John’s knuckles whitened as he thought about how many times he’d wanted to deck the asshole himself.

The other woman on the crew had fared better, at least from Urgayle. Of course, the fact that she looked like she was already suffering torments eternal probably accounted for that. Hard to make someone any more miserable than Sarah Bailey seemed to be.

All in all it was going to be an interesting few months, at the very least.

Later

Faith’s hands shook as she looked at herself in the mirror.

The rest of the crew were asleep, but she didn’t need any just yet. The physical exertions of the day were more than she’d had to deal with before, but still nothing that could really stress her Slayer abilities.

That Urgayle prick, though, he was something else.

She ran her hand through the stubble that remained of her hair, and shuddered as she thought of how many times she’d lost it just that day alone.

She’d have killed Urgayle at least once, if he’d been in reach, but if she didn’t know better he was purposely just riding that line, delighting is tapping her over it and out of control as often as he could.

Everytime she had lost it, though, the whole crew suffered.

Most of those guys weren’t nearly as strong as she was, though the weird geeky kid couldn’t possibly be normal. Faith could feel their glares on her back now, though.

<Fuck em.> She thought, <I’m not here for them. Fuck them.>

She washed her face, cleaning off the grit but continuing to wash long after she was clean, until her skin was rubbed raw. Finally she turned off the water and walked back out to her bunk, where the rest of her crew, and several others, were sleeping.

“You ok, F?”

She stopped, looking over to see Xander laying back in his bunk, his eyes were closed but he was facing her position.

“I’m fine, Stud,” She replied, putting a little cockiness into her voice.

He nodded, not opening his eyes, “Glad to hear it, F. Not planning on ringing that bell, right?”

She shook her head silently.

“Good.” he replied, still not opening his eyes. “Get some sleep.”

She nodded, moving off through the dark.

“Faith.”

She stopped, looking back, “Ya, Stud?”

“You can do this.”

Faith swallowed, then just nodded curtly before moving off toward her bunk. When she got there, she pulled the heavy wool blanket over her and just stared at the ceiling as she listened to the soft breaths coming from all around her. Sleep eventually snuck up on her, unnoticed and unannounced.

Day by day, the Indoc, or Indoctrination, phase wore on in like fashion. They’d run then drop and do pushups until they lost count. The Obstacle course was a daily evolution, men moving through it constantly, being constantly challenged to improve their times despite the growing weariness that began to gnaw at their bones.

Pool and open bay swims were done daily, keeping them moving non stop to build up endurance. By week three, a half dozen people had rang the bell to DOR, and two more were pushed back to the next group due to injures sustained while training.

After the third day, Xander had slid into a comfortable place where he wasn’t really feeling the strain anymore. Not until the day was over, at least, and he was finally allowed to stop. It always surprised him how damned good he felt when he finally got to lay back and let his body unwind at the end of the day.

Others weren’t faring so well, and he noticed that a couple of the guys in his crew were running on the ragged edge by the second week. No one had DOR’d from his team yet, but Xander figured it was just a matter of time.

At the end of week five, the men who still remained were assembled together, out in the middle of a rainstorm as the instructors moved about them with full rain gear.

“You’re what’s left after Indoc, so I bet you’re feeling pretty damn tough, aren’t you!?” Urgayle growled out, his voice echoing over the sound of the falling rain, “Well don’t!”

“Monday morning, Oh Six Hundred Hours, we start Phase one of BUD/s... And I guarantee you this... We will weed out every slacker, quitter, and lazabout bastard among you! What you’ve experienced so far was just our way of welcoming you to Coronado.”

He looked around, “Congratulations. Monday you’re going to suffer like you’ve never imagined for having the nerve to step into my world!”

They stood there, some shivering from either the cold of the rain soaking them through or perhaps from the threat Urgayle left hanging in the air, and then they were dismissed. The group broke up, most heading for the barracks to get some warm dry clothes on, some heading for the mess hall first.

Xander stripped to the buff by his bunk, throwing the nearly ruined clothes he had on into a pile to be laundered if they were still worth recovering.

Faith walked past him, barely glancing at him or anyone else as she stripped down too. Tossing her own stuff straight into a trash bin, not even bothering with the laundry basket. While she was dressing she glanced back to see Xander finishing up and packing his stuff away.

When he started out, she called out, “Yo, X... hang on.”

He glanced back and nodded, waiting by his bunk for her to finish up and join him.

“You ok?” He asked as they walked out, heading for the mess hall. By the third day of Indoc he’d heard the scuttlebutt concerning Faith and Master Chief Urgayle, and he was worried about her.

She nodded curtly, “I’ve been called worse.”

Xander’s lip twitched, noting that she wasn’t trying to hide it from him anymore. For the longest time she’d tried to hide what she was dealing with from him, as if he hadn’t heard the rumors, or even witnessed some of the events.

Faith’s temper got the best of her more than once, causing her boat crew to do more work than any of the others on a regular basis. Not that Xander was entirely convinced that was the only reason, given that it was obvious to him that they’d put all the ‘special’ class individuals into the same group.

Xander didn’t have access to any of the files anymore, but he knew some of them from memory and his eyes weren’t so bad that he could miss the lack of strain on Seaman Foley’s face as he hefted the old log the trainers called ‘Misery’. There was something different about that one, sure as hell.

That made Faith’s crew the place where they’d placed all the people they thought needed special ‘encouragement’.

“You’re better than that, you know that, right?”

Faith snorted, “Don’t give a shit what he calls me.”

“I’m not talking about him,” Xander said as they headed into the mess hall and got into line, “I’m talking about you.”

“I’m fine, X.”

Xander sighed, wondering, not for the first time, why she hung around him if she wasn’t going to talk about what was bugging her. He just let it slide again, though, because he was too damned hungry to do anything else.

They got their food and sat down to eat, filling their bellies in silence.

“Few guys are heading out for drinks tonight,” Xander said after a while, “Blowing off some stress before basic conditioning starts... Feel like coming?”

Faith looked up, her expression hesitant.

Finally she nodded, “Sure.”

He nodded, then turned back to his food, and they finished the meal in silence.

Admiral Chegwidden flipped through the files, looking over the evaluations as the men and woman in his office stood at ease. Finally he nodded, looking up, “Impressions?”

“Good group, Sir,” Curran replied, “Some personality problems, but they’ll iron out, or drop out.”

Chegwidden nodded, then turned to Urgayle, “Master Chief?”

“Lehane’s got a hair trigger,” He replied, “But she’s the toughest bitch I’ve ever seen... Physically at least.”

He smirked, glancing over at Jordan O’Neil, “No offense, Ma’am.”

“None taken, Master Chief,” O’Neil replied dryly, “But it’s not Lehane’s physical state that concerns me, Admiral.”

“Explain.”

“Frankly Sir, she’s not Seal material,” Jordan replied flatly. “She’s not a team player, and she doesn’t give a damn about her boat crew, Sir.”

Chegwidden glanced over at Urgayle, who had spared Jordan a surprised look. “Master Chief?”

“We’ll see, Sir.” He said after a moment, “I’ll either make her ring the bell, or her own crew will throw her the fuck out if she doesn’t straighten up.”

They gathered at a bar just off base, less than a mile down the road, and the party was in full swing by the time Xander and Faith arrived. They walked, mostly because Xander didn’t want to be pulled over for driving drunk at the end of the night or, worse, not pulled over and run his car into the ocean.

As he and Faith stepped inside the eruption of sounds, sights, and smells just washed over both of them. There were men from the base at pretty much every table, but all the Seal hopefuls were mostly off in one corner of bar, so they made their way over there.

“Beer good with you, F?” Xander asked as he caught the eye of the waitress.

“Yeah, sure.” Faith shrugged.

Xander held up two fingers, then waved her over. The woman nodded from across the bar and grabbed a couple bottles of Heineken from the fridge before coming over.

“Hey, Xander,” She greeted him, dropping the beers off, then noted the colors he was wearing, “Did you finally decide to sign up?”

Xander nodded, smiling, “Yeah.”

“That’s great... hey, these two are on the house.”

“Thanks Kim,” Xander nodded, “Oh, hey, this is Faith.”

The waitress noted the colors on her and looked surprised, “She’s... in with you?”

Xander nodded.

“Well... good luck, Girl. You ain’t exactly going where no gal has gone before, but the last time I saw a woman in those colors was a few years ago.”

Faith just nodded, not saying anything, and the waitress took the hint and left.

“She was just being friendly, you know,” Xander said, “A woman in the teams is pretty big news. Luckily after Lieutenant O’Neill made it the press interest wore off, so we shouldn’t have to duck cameras and crap.”

Faith let out an unhappy snort, shaking her head, “Just what I need. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this crap, X.”

“Cause you’re not really interested in pretending to be a good little punished girl in prison, F,” Xander replied, “And this gives you a shot at making a real difference.”

“Yeah, right.”

Xander watched her nurse her beer, his eyes roaming around the bar. His boat crew were mostly there, and he caught their eye from where he was sitting, exchanging silent greetings as he talked with Faith. Faith’s team were there too, but most of them were already looking in his direction and they didn’t look entirely happy.

“You’re really popular,” He said dryly, nodding over her shoulder.

Faith glanced back, then scowled, “Fuck em.”

Xander sighed, then reached out and took the bottle from her, setting it down next to his own, “Ok, let’s talk.”

“Give me my fucking beer,” She said, reaching for it.

He slapped her hand, drawing a startled look from her face.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, X?”

“Faith... around here, your team is your life. You live for them, you die for them,” Xander said evenly, “Cause when the chips are down, they’re gonna do the same for you.”

“Like hell.” Faith countered, “Those guys don’t give a shit about me.”

“How would you know? You’re too busy pissing them off to know what the fuck they think,” Xander growled.

“They’re all pissed off at me for shit I can’t control,” Faith growled, “I didn’t ask that bastard to be up in my face for the last five weeks... He’s lucky I didn’t rip his head off, literally.”

Xander snorted, “Damn it Faith, he’s only on you because you’re easy.”

Her eyes flared, but Xander just looked at her like she was particularly stupid, “Not that kind of Easy, Faith. He’s looking for weaknesses in the team... right now, you’ve got a big son of a bitch of a bullseye on your forehead.”

“You calling me *weak*!?”

“You’re the biggest weakness in your team right now... You don’t give a shit about them, they don’t give a shit about you... He can use that,” Xander nodded, “And he is.”

“I’m not the fucking weak one, X,” She snarled, leaning in. “Damn it, I can out move any of those guys, and don’t get me started on the prissy bitch.”

Xander shook his head.

“What!?”

“You just don’t fucking get it.”

Faith growled, “Why don’t you explain it to me then, Stud?”

Xander sighed, then shook his head, “Faith... You’ve got to get it for yourself... I could talk and talk all night long and you wouldn’t really get it. You need to...”

A sudden explosion of noise startled both of them, and they jumped out of their seats as a body slammed into the table they were on, scattering their beer to the ground as he slid on past and tumbled off the other side.

“Fuck!” Faith muttered, brushing some beer off her clothes as she looked at the guy who’d hit the ground, “John?”

Xander only glanced back for a moment before he turned to see three large and burly Seals heading in their direction.

“Faith...”

“I got this,” She said arrogantly, smirking.

“Check on your crew mate,” Xander growled, “And be ready to back me up if I need it.”

She muttered something under her breath, but Xander wasn’t paying attention as he held up his hands in a peaceable gesture. “Hey guys....”

“Hey Xan,” The lead one nodded, “Step aside, ok?”

“Now come on, Harry,” Xander said, moving more firmly between them and their quarry, “I don’t know what this is all about, but...”

“That little PUNK was knockin the teams!” Harold ‘Harry’ Smith responded, “We’re just giving him an object lesson.”

Xander actually paused, glancing back over his shoulder to where Faith was helping John O’Neill to his feet. “He what??”

“Little punk kid was ragging on the teams, talking about those Air Force PJs!” Jeremy Cyr, another Team 5 Seal growled, “Now you better step aside, Xan...”

Xander sighed, shaking his head, <Note to self... John can’t hold his liqueur.> “I can’t do that guys...”

“X, you’re tough, but you ain’t one of us yet.” Harry said, taking a step forward.

“Come on, let’s talk this out... Johnny back there had a deprived childhood,” Xander said calmly, “His old man was a PJ... cut him a little slack, the guy’s not even old enough to be drinking in here yet.”

He could hear John O’Neill struggling with Faith behind him, and Xander prayed that Faith would hold the guy back.

“Deprived? Depraved is more like it,” Harry snorted, putting up hands to hold the rest back. “He really underage?”

“Seventeen,” Xander confirmed, remembering John’s file from his discussions with the Admiral. Most of it had been blacked out, but that alone was enough to guarantee he remembered it.

The three guys, who’d obviously been looking forward to inflicting some pain on the punk wannabe started to wind down, and Xander relaxed marginally.

“Fine. Keep him out of here, Xan,” Harry growled, “We don’t want to see him around until he smartens up a bit.”

“You got it guys,” Xander nodded, waiting for them to walk off before he turned to see Faith holding an unconscious John O’Neill. He frowned, “What happened?”

She shrugged, “Johnny boy here wanted to get into it with those three and you seemed to want to avoid it... I went with your plan.”

Xander blinked, “You knocked him out??”

From across the bar, in a darkened corner, Master Chief Urgayle watched the confrontation with a mix of curious interest and eager anticipation, right up until it ended with Harris somehow managing to talk down the irate Seals. The Master Chief settled back, trying to decide if he was intrigued or disappointed in the outcome.

“You catch that, Master Chief?”

Urgayle looked up in surprise to see Jordan O’Neil take a seat beside him, “Most of it. What set it off?”

“O’Neill, with two l’s,” She smirked, “made some cracks about Seals Vs PJs... apparently the PJs came out better.”

Urgayle choked on his beer, throwing a sudden glare over to where Harris and Lehane were carrying O’Neill out of the bar. “And Harris managed to talk them out of beating the punk to a pulp?? How the FUCK did that happen??”

“Not sure, but I’m going to find out from those boys,” Jordan promised.

Urgayle pushed his beer away in disgust, “I don’t know whether to be intrigued or pissed off, Lieutenant.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me, Master Chief.” Jordan replied dryly as she rose from the chair and headed off into the crowd.

Urgayle frowned, trying to decide whether Harris had been smart or craven in talking his way out of a fight. It wasn’t exactly a clean cut line, though. On the one side, Urgayle himself would pound into the punk for the PJ shit soon enough. However, he was a recruit in Harris’ class, so covering for him was potentially a good thing.

But what was up with the diplomacy shit anyway? In Urgayle’s opinion, no Seal worthy of the name would have backed down from a good bar fight. So he wanted to protect his class mate, that’s good... why talk?

Well, other than the fact that he was facing down three real deal Seals.

Urgayle frowned, shaking his head. No, fear wasn’t it either. Harris had a rep already in the Teams, the guy had a habit of taking on scarier things that Seals, as much as the Master Chief hated to admit it. Besides, the guy had Lehane there ready to kick ass from the look on her face. Chances were, she could have taken the three guys all on her own.

Urgayle rubbed his forehead, this class was going to give him ulcers *and* migraines, he decided. The fact that Lehane was there might have been the factor that kept Harris from being more aggressive. He knew her history, he may not have wanted people to wind up in the infirmary over a stupid bar brawl.

Urgayle grinned, whatever Harris’ reason was, he was going to remember Lehane cold cocking O’Neill for a good long time. Punk had it coming.

First Day of Basic Conditioning

The Gods of Seal Instructors had smiled down on the class, pouring rain down on them as they stood outside in their white T-shirts and BDU pants, already shivering in the early morning light despite the fact that they were california in the freaking summer. Xander could see the pure enjoyment and satisfaction in the eyes of the trainers as they trailed the trainees in Hummers as they started off with a ‘brisk run’.

The mud sloshed under foot as they entered the second straight hour of the run, having passed fifteen miles quite some time back, and Xander could feel his feet swelling in the combat boots he wore. The play time was over apparently, and the instructors were keen to make sure everyone of them knew it too.

He passed a couple of the guys who were lagging, already hearing the instructor who was tailing him start into them for dropping off the pace. Up ahead he could see one of the kids from another crew wheezing as he slowed down. Murphy, Xander thought. Dade or Cade.

He blinked away the rain as he came abreast, “You ok?”

The guy nodded, matching Xander’s pace in jerky motions. “Can’t... believe... I... volunteered for... this.”

“Save your breath,” Xander advised, “Just keep moving no matter what.”

Dade nodded breathlessly and Xander slowed a bit to let him keep up. “Just stay with me.”

He saw the guy nod again, and Xander wondered why he’d slowed as the two guys he’d just passed thudded on past him and Dade, pushed back to their previous speed by the instructors.

They were still running like that a few minutes later when most of Faith’s crew came back the other way, apparently being headed back toward the staging area, with Faith and the Foley kid at the lead. Neither of them had the decency to look even slightly winded.

The last of the class staggered into the staging area as the rain broke just before lunch and the instructors let the whole group break to eat as four guys lined up and rang the bell at the head of the beach. A couple of the navy guys shivered with each resonating tone of the bell, purposely not looking around to see who had DORed.

After they’d crammed as much food into them as they could hold they were led down the beach where the instructors backed them up to the waves and kicked them over backwards into the surf. Xander landed hard, barely keeping his wind as he and his crew hooked their arms together while a wave broke over them.

It wasn’t cold, at first, the water not seemingly any worse than the rain had been, if maybe a little wetter after a fashion, but it didn’t take long for them to start shivering. Even in California the water temperature didn’t rise much above twenty degrees Celsius, and it was a better conductor of heat than the air so with ever wash of white water that dunked them, more precious body heat was swept out to sea.

Within minutes they were shivering uncontrollably while the instructors walked over them, occasionally dunking a man’s head into a wave as he tried to hold it above water. Xander could hear a few guys starting to mutter about the cold in short order, attracting the attention of Master Chief Ryback.

He leaned down over the man who was talking, his voice so soft that it was scary when compared to the screaming the others did.

“Feeling cold?” He asked, “You freezing there, Sailor?”

“Y... yes Master Chief!”

“Thinking about quitting?”

“N-no Master Chief!”

“Still cold then?”

The man shook his head, “N-n-no Master Chief!”

Ryback nodded, straightening up, then growled at the group, “Up the beach!”

They struggled to their feet, their rain and ocean soaked clothes clinging to them as they started to move. Ryback got them up to the section of telephone pole, and in a few minutes they were shifting that monstrosity up to their shoulders and over their heads in quick succession.

“This’ll warm you up, Sailor!”

“Hoo Yah! Master Chief!” The man screamed.

“What about the rest of you!? You warm enough now!?”

Xander screamed with the rest of them, “Hoo Yah Master Chief!”

John O’Neill groaned as his arms twitched and jumped, shivering uncontrollably from the cold as Master Chief Urgayle hosed down the entire team with water pumped up from deep down. It was freezing, and he had a hard job thinking about anything else other than the cold.

Of course, he hadn’t been through worse before. Not really. He *remembered* being through worse before. Being tortured by human and alien alike, nearly freezing to death in a half dozen places, including the antarctic, and a whole host of things that had happened to the other him. But it wasn’t him. Not this body, which was soft and undevelopped, despite the training he’d already undergone. Not this body, that didn’t have the built in survival instincts, hard wired into it’s every nerve ending.

This body was fresh and virgin, and he was learning one again just how much it hurt to properly break in.

His arm was linked with Faith’s on his left, and he noted in a corner of his mind that her arm was warm, not cold like his seemed to be. He glanced over as another cascade of freezing water washed over and noted that other than the fact that her white t-shirt was showing pretty much everything there was to be seen, she seemed almost indifferent to the cold.

<What the hell is this chick!?> He thought before turning back as a hand reached down and grabbed his shirt, yanking him up.

“In the water!” Jordan O’Neil growled as she threw the young figure of John O’Neill off the pier and into the water below. “Tread in place!”

By the end of the first day they were all tired and chafed in places they hadn’t even been sure they had. Everytime they were put in the surf the ocean waves drove sand inside their clothes, and every step after that turned into a mild, but cumulative, torture.

That night even Faith slept quickly and deeply.

In the morning they were awakened by the sudden entrance of the Instructors, jerking them out of bed and onto the cold concrete floor, the sudden assault proving disorienting and extremely stressful for most of the trainees.

Faith was on her feet almost before the first person made it through the door, though, awake in a flash and ready to fight until she remembered where she was. Xander was just behind her, his Sunnydale bred instincts had made him a light sleeper, and before the first instructor reached his bed he was already yanking on his pants.

A lot of them weren’t so lucky, and they were trundled out in their navy issue boxers and white tees with only their boots.

From there they were hounded out to the obstacle course and run through for the next hour and a half until breakfast.

After breakfast, they found themselves back in the surf, covered from head to toe in sand as the waves broke over them, the only break from the cold water when they were pulled up and run through calisthenics in their wet and chafing gear.

“Circle around!”

Xander shuffled along with his boat crew, trying to keep the sandy cloth of his pants from the sore patches along his inner thighs.

“This is what we call drownproofing,” Lieutenant Hawkins grinned, “And my personal favorite evolution, I might add. Harris... You’re up first.”

Xander suppressed a groan. Who said it was good to know the teacher?

Hawkins stood him around in front of the group, smirking as he noted the uncontrollable shivering. “Don’t worry... pool water is plenty warm.”

Somehow that didn’t assure Xander as he stripped down to his shorts and and put on the diving goggles while Hawkins produced some rope.

“Just so you don’t find it too easy.” he grinned, tying Xander’s hands. “Once you’re in... don’t die... It’ll look bad on my record.”

Xander shot him a glare, but Hawkins just smirked and pushed.

“Bastar-“ Xander growled out as he went in, the water flowing over him.

Hands behind his back and feet bound he twisted in the water, trying to right himself as the air flowed around him, bubbles floating up. He shook his head, looking around through the goggles to orient himself. A second later he kicked off the bottom and breached the surface, taking a breath.

“Alright!” He heard Hawkin’s say, “just bob there for a few minutes while I get the rest of these guys in.”

So Xander did just that, bounced up and down from bottom to surface in the nine foot depth of the pool, taking a breath every time he surfaced, and letting it slowly out as he kicked off the bottom.

One by one and in groups the others were tossed in with him, all quickly righting themselves and following Xander’s lead. After all the guys were bobbing, Xander saw Hawkins’ grin down at him when he popped up.

“Alright, that’s enough... just float there for a while.”

Xander smothered a few well chosen words as he tried to float with his head above water, which wasn’t nearly as easy as it should have been given that his hands were behind his back and he couldn’t keep himself balanced so he kept listing over, dunking his head every few seconds.

After a few minutes of that, though, Xander was rapidly feeling sick to his stomach as he tried to stay afloat. The Instructors kept moving around, and he could hear them calling out as he ducked under water, then struggled back to the top.

“Harris! Xander!” Hawkins was screaming, “You ok!?”

Water sprayed from his mouth as he surfaced, nodding. “Hoo yah!”

“Don’t you drown on me, Harris! Five laps! Come on!”

Xander groaned, twisting in place as he kicked and tried to swing his arm through the water. It got him some locomotion, enough that he began to limp along and get a breath every stroke or so, but it was slow going.

Hawkins walked along side as Xander kept fighting against the water with his bound limbs. “Come on, Harris! Don’t you fucking drown on me! I’ve got a reputation to uphold up here!”

Xander sprayed a blast of chlorinated water out of his mouth as he glared up, “Fuck you, Hawk.”

“What was that, Harris!?” Hawkins grinned, kneeling down by the edge.

Xander kicked extra hard as he shouted “Hoo Yah, Lieutenant!” The water spraying up and soaking Hawkins as the man jumped back, growling.

“Smart ass!”

Xander smiled as he pushed through the water, the sickness fading back a little as he continued to push through the warm water of the pool, trying to figure out how he was supposed to do five laps of a twenty meter pool with both hands tied behind his back and his feet strung together.

Master Chief Urgayle exchanged disgusted looks with the other instructors, kicking the frayed rope across the pool before looking down at the two who were calmly treading water. As expected, the smirk was there on Lehane’s face as she looked back. At least Foley had more sense, but that wasn’t going to save him this time.

“I bet you two think you’re real smart, don’t you?” He demanded.

“N-No Master Chief!” Foley said, “I s-swear! I didn’t do it on purpose...”

“Right.” Urgayle shook his head, looking away from them. He cocked his head to one said, and then just shook it, “I don’t even want to KNOW how she’s doing that...”

At the bottom of the nine foot deep pool Sarah Bailey was calmly sitting, occasionally waving off an attempt to rescue her, as she’d been doing for the past twenty minutes.

“Fine!” Urgayle growled, “You want to play it that way... Jenks!”

“Yes Master Chief!” A Petty Officer ran over.

“Go down to the motor pool and get me about twenty meters of winch cable and a set of bolt cutters,” Urgayle growled, “We’re gonna find just how strong these smart ass punks really are.”

“Aye Aye Master Chief!” The PO saluted with a grin before running off.

Urgayle glanced back down into the pool, noting that Lehane wasn’t smirking any more, and Foley was looking downright scared.

<Good>

“Where the hell did Fawkes go!?”

Jordan’s sudden yell jerked him around, and as he cast about the pool he could see that they were indeed missing one of the group.

“Fuck!”

Fawkes. Fawkes was the one who could disappear, right? Why the fuck would he do it in a pool!?

Across the pool, alerted by the noise another commotion kicked out, distracting Urgayle. He saw Harris push out of the huddle where Hawkins had that group, bolting for the pool.

“Harris! Belay that!”

“He turns invisible when he panics, Master Chief!” Harris screamed as he threw himself in the water.

Urgayle looked around, “What kind of dumb ass thing is that!?”

Then he ripped his own shirt off and dove in himself, just a hair’s tick behind Jordan O’Neil. <How in the hell can I be expected to train this bunch of wack jobs!?>

The pool erupted into a mass of chaos as instructors ran over and began fishing people out, others diving in, and none of them knowing exactly where to look. Faith and Jake exchanged glances from where they were treading water and both ducked under at once, joining the search as they began to feel around blindly for someone who apparently wasn’t there.

With everyone searching, or evacuating, the pool it took only seconds for Fawkes to be found. Xander plowed into him only moments after diving in, hooking the invisible form and kicking off the bottom for the surface.

“Got him!” He screamed as he surfaced, paddling a side stroke for the edge.

Faith met him halfway, hooking an arm around the invisible chest, then they both handed him up to Hawkins before pulling themselves out of the pool. From across the pool it must have looked like a bunch of insane Mimes had taken over because they didn’t talk, they just manhandled Fawke’s invisible form flat out on the pool as they felt around blindly trying to figure out where his head and feet were.

Hawkins’ tilted his head back, opening his mouth with two fingers as Xander knelt by Fawke’s chest.

“And one,” Hawkins’ said, blowing hard into Fawkes’ mouth.

Xander nodded and proceeded to do chest compressions, keeping count. When he paused, Hawkins breathed again, and they repeated. People gathered around, some completely lost, others knowing what was going on yet still having a hard time believing it. The two men ignored them, though, and just kept up CPR with a steady rhythm.

Finally they were rewarded with s burst of coughing as a splash of water came from nowhere and sprayed Hawkins’ face. He jerked back, wiping himself down in disgust, as a sound like glass breaking echoed around them and Darien Fawkes appeared from thin air.

“Alright,” Urgayle let out a breath, pointing out a couple people, “You two, get Fawkes down to medical.”

The two men nodded, moving in and lifting the man to his feet.

“You’ll be ok,” Xander said to Darien, clapping him on his shoulder as he moved past.

The Invisible Man nodded, but didn’t spare any breath for speaking as he stumbled away under the power of the two sailors.

For the rest of that day, things were a little more subdued despite the best the instructors could do to keep things moving. Times didn’t drop off by much, but it was more than enough to have Urgayle redouble his efforts to push them to greater and greater feats.

John O’Neill ran more in that one day that he’d ever done in his stint with SG1 which, considering how many alien warlords and their lackeys had chased him, was saying something. They did the obstacle course twice, and ate MREs about twenty miles from the mess hall rather than run back.

All in those damned combat boots and wet clothes.

The worst of it was that he knew that the worst was yet to come.

Hell Week was looming in his mind, anywhere from 3 to five weeks away depending on the instructors, and he couldn’t help but think that if he was hurting this bad now...

He shook his head to clear it, noticing that the kid Foley was actually lagging as they ran.

“W-what’s wrong?” He gasped out.

“Nothing.” Jake shook his head.

“Bullshit.”

Jake glanced over, and O’Neill read it in his eyes.

“Fawkes is gonna make it.” He said as they paced along, just behind Faith at the head of the pack.

“I know that, but...”

“This isn’t safe, I know.” John replied, wishing to hell that he didn’t have to do the whole reassuring thing on the run, but the Hummer with the instructors was approaching from behind again. “Not supposed to be safe though. Supposed to be hard.”

Foley shrugged, “I guess.”

John sighed. Well, if he were honest it was more of a wheeze. God he was going to learn to hate the goofy look of ease on Foley’s face. Where the hell did the Navy find this kid anyway? Where did they find Fawkes or Faith for that matter?

<That’s forgetting the lady from Atlantis or whatever the fuck she is to do that breathing under water shit...>

Of course, as long as he was being honest, they probably found them the same place they’d found him. In some government file cabinet labeled ‘freaks of nature’. Here he was, forty plus years of experience crammed into a scrawny seventeen year old body. Not exactly the epitome of normality, so to speak.

On Day four, with Darien Fawkes back on the line, they were marched out to the beach. The entire class, those that were left anyway, and introduced to their new ‘best friends’.

Several large rubber zodiac style boats were there, each one assigned to a boat crew as Urgayle grinned around at them.

“Now that we’ve got the easy stuff behind us, it’s time to have a little fun...” He grinned as an eight food breaker crashed behind him, “Time for some basic seamanship... Seal style!”

“Lift Boat!” The Instructors called out.

The teams nudged in, heaving the heavy rubber boats up between them and stood there waiting. The damn boats pulled on their arms, even with all of them together, but at least it wasn’t as tightly packed as old Misery.

“IN the water!” Urgayle called, “Get your boats out to the marker bouey, turn around, and come back!

They jogged for the waterline, splashing through the foaming water as they got the boat in place and clambered aboard. They broke out the oars and started to paddle like mad, teams on either side doing the same as they all made for the breaker line.

Xander was in the front of his boat, and all he saw was the eight foot swell suddenly loom up ahead, forming as if from nothing against the grey sky, and then it was cresting and starting to roll.

“Hang on!” He called as the boat nosed into it, and suddenly he was sent flying straight up into the air.

Vertically, they crested the wave, still paddling as much as they could, and then they crashed down the other side, water cascading off them as they kept on moving. There were men in life jackets bobbing to the surface all around them, another boat was overturned just to their right, and behind them two more were upside down and riding the wave back in to shore.

Xander twisted around, “Is everyone here!?”

A head count, and one quick fishing expedition, later they all were and they kept paddling like mad for the bouey.

Admiral Chegwidden glanced through the reports, doing his regular weekly meeting with the instructors.

“Impressions?” He asked after a moment.

“Fawkes needs to learn some discipline with that damn ability of his,” Jordan said tiredly. “It damn near got him killed.”

The Admiral nodded, but frowned, “Not sure he can. Physically, that is... According to the notes I’ve seen, it was tied specifically into his autonomic adrenal response system. He can learn to turn it on at will... but turning it off...”

“Would be suicidal,” Curran finished, nodding from a report he was reading, “I agree Admiral.”

“Well it’s a bitch to watch out for,” Urgayle growled, but without much bite.

“Noted, Master Chief.” The Admiral said dryly, “What about Lehane?”

“Hard bitch to break.” Urgayle grunted, “Hard to read too. Got a poker face I wouldn’t want to play against. She’s getting better with her crew.”

“Marginally.” Jordan cautioned. “I still say she’s not Seal Material.”

“I hope you’re wrong there, Lieutenant,” Curran sighed, “We need her abilities in the field. Have you seen the casualties for Team Five lately? We’ve lost another eighteen men to death or crippling injuries in the last three months. Even with volunteers from regular BUD/s courses and other teams, we can’t keep that up for much longer... To be honest, I don’t think we’re going to last long enough to graduate this group.”

The Admiral nodded grimly, “I think that with the former Initiative hunter teams swinging into action, we might be able to share the burden.”

“I hope so, Sir.”

The Admiral then closed the files and opened another one, one that wasn’t on the priority watch list, “What about Harris?”

Hawkins’ smirked, “He puked in the pool during drownproofing, but almost finished the lap anyway. Not great, but not bad.”

“Kid’s got good observation skills,” Urgayle said dryly, “He zeroed right in on Fawkes like a smart bomb. Invisible and underwater... not really sure what he saw to give up the guy’s position...”

“He’s leading his boat crew, Admiral,” Casey Ryback pronounced softly. “They listen to him when he talks.”

Samuel Winchester just tried to keep moving as the sound of motors rumbled all around him. He could hear the instructors calling out from their nice, warm, and dry places aboard the zodiacs but he’d lost the ability to really understand what they were saying a long while back.

The two miles open ocean swims were daily events by the second week of Basic Conditioning, and while he had always been in good shape, this wasn’t really his forte in the slightest. Weights, running, even the obstacle course, those hadn’t taxed him much. Being a ‘professional’ demon hunter tended to give one two things most people didn’t have.

First, a certain level of fitness beyond that of most people. This was almost a default for demon hunters who survived, because those who weren’t fit, well they didn’t. The second thing that surviving hunters tended to have was an ability to push themselves beyond what they should have technically been able to do.

Those two things had let him get this far into the training without much extreme effort, not that it was easy exactly, it just wasn’t impossible.

The swimming, though, in open ocean water that mostly didn’t range much above sixty five degrees F, proved that the cold and Sam weren’t friends. Moving kept him from shivering, but the cold still penetrated deep until he had a hard job remembering what it was like to be warm.

That was rapidly becoming his normal state of being, he found. He spent twelve hours a day freezing his ass off and doing stuff that even a freaking demon wouldn’t torture someone with.

“Winchester!”

Sam felt himself snap out of the dull and painless world he’d constructed for himself, the harsh light of day glaring in suddenly, bringing pain and cold back with it.

“Winchester!”

“Whu!?” He called back, not quite able to make his jaw and tongue work as planned.

“You ok? Do you know where you are, Sailor?”

“‘M in the fuckin ocean!”

On the zodiac Hawkins chuckled, slapping the boat pilot, “He’s fine... back us up a bit, I think that’s Xander coming up next.”

The Zodiac pilot nodded, dropping the throttle and letting Winchester and the three in his group overtake them. Xander Harris was churning the water behind them, moving out alone and well ahead of his group. They’d noticed him starting to pull ahead earlier, and Hawkins had received a radio call from Jordan letting him know that she had ordered Harris to let it all out and was passing him off to Hawkins.

“He’s really moving it, Hawk.”

Hawkins nodded, watching the steady strokes eat up the water. He checked his watch, noting that Xander had roughly cut three minutes off his last time already, and nearly cut his earliest times in half.

“He’s coming up on the stragglers from Crew one, You want to let him past, give him over to Urgayle?”

Hawkins considered, wondering how much further the younger man could keep up this kind of pace. They were past the mile marker now, probably heading for a mile and a half. Hawkins nodded to himself, “Yeah... Radio Urgayle... tell him we’re passing Harris up to him...”

“Harris!” Hawkins yelled, as the swimmer came within a few feet of the boat, “You gonna coast all morning, or you gonna work for it!? Come on, move it! Move it!”

As Xander poured on more speed, he began to push past the boat and Hawkins straightened up with a smirk.

“What?” He asked as the Pilot gave him a strange look, “I’m not gonna tell him he’s catching up on Lehane and Foley.”

The other Seal just laughed, gunning the engine as he turned the boat back, heading back to check on the next group.

“Fawkes! Don’t you go see through on me boy!” Urgayle screamed over the edge of the zodiac, “I lose sight of you for one second, I swear to God I’ll find you and drown you myself!”

Darien Fawkes shuddered, his body shivering uncontrollably as he continued to crawl, one thing running over and over in his mind.

His arms burned, his legs burned, his lungs burned, and they all fucking FROZE at the same time.

How the HELL did that work, Darien wanted to know. Hell, he’d pay good money, alright good stolen money, to know how it was possible to freeze to death at the same time as every muscle in his body was on FIRE.

“Don’t you drop off on me! Fawkes! Wake up you stupid bastard!”

Fawkes shook in the water, flipping the Chief the bird as he kept trying to move ahead.

“Well,” The Seal at the controls smirked dryly, “He at least knows who you are, Master Chief.”

Urgayle glared over his shoulder, then looked back to Fawkes. He wasn’t taking an eye off Fawkes for more than a second if he could help it. Damn guy could drown on you and you’d never even see the body until he was long dead. At least most assholes who tried out for this shit had the decency to die out in the open where you could see them.

Fawkes had guts though, Urgayle would give the man that much. Lot of guys, even the toughest guys, would think twice about getting back in the water after damn near drowning. Of course, Urgayle had noticed Fawkes think more than twice, right up until O’Neill tossed him in the pool.

That little bit of pseudo-leadership and team building earned the little PJ punk a slight reprieve from Urgayle’s on going quest to pay the punk back.

“Master Chief!”

Urgayle glanced back, “What?”

“Check out Winchester!”

Urgayle glanced back, noting that Winchester’s rhythm was becoming choppy. He glanced down at Fawkes for a moment, then nodded, “Take us back!”

“Aye Master Chief!”

The Zodiac curled away from Fawkes, dropping back to where Winchester was paddling roughly through the waves.

“Winchester!”

The young man didn’t notice him and kept on swimming

Urgayle leaned over as the side, “Winchester!”

Sam slowed, looking around, “Wha?”

“Where are you, boy!?”

“Huh?” He mumbled, blinking water away from his eyes as he looked around.

“What’s your name!?”

Winchester blinked again, shaking his head, but didn’t answer.

“Alright,” Urgayle decided, reaching over, “Come on, you’re done.”

He pulled Winchester aboard, dragging him over the side and rolled him down into the bottom of the boat, throwing a heavy wool blanket down. “Warm up, kid. You’ll try again tomorrow.”

Sam shivered below, curling up into a fetal position as he clutched at the warm blanket, and didn’t hear anything the Master Chief said.

“Take us back up to Fawkes.” Urgayle said, glancing down as another swimmer came up past the boat and pulled ahead of them. “Who the hell was that?”

“Harris,” The pilot said, “Hawkins’ passed him up to us, I’ve been watching for him... He’s burning up his times.”

Urgayle smirked, “Not bad. Alright, he’s going fine... Take us back up to Fawkes.”

“Aye Aye.”

Day in and day out it was the same thing, only the order sometimes changed. They ran, they swam, they bobbed with their hands tied behind their backs. The obstacle course got tighter and more grueling, their times being held against them as the instructors demanded constant improvement on a near daily basis.

When the surf was right, they did seamanship tests, getting thrown into the sea as their boats were tossed and overturned, throwing them all into the water so often that most of them forgot what it felt like to be warm and dry.

They lost a few more people, the bell ringing three times for each, but for the most part things dropped into a pattern that seemed almost routine by the end of the third week. Tensions, though, continued to rise because each of them knew what was coming.

Hell Week.

During the prep classes they’d all sat through it had been stressed.

During the exercises and evolutions they endured, it was held up as a looming threat, the ultimate revenge of the Instructors for whatever slights they may have incurred.

By the end, at least three quarters of them were dreaming about Hell Week, only to wake up in the morning and realize that it was yet to come.

On that Friday, they got the word.

They’d better get lots of rest over the weekend, cause the following week was Hell Week.

For Admiral Chegwidden the overall numbers were looking good for once. They’d only had nine DORs over all, though they’d lost another three to injuries sustained during training. That wasn’t bad for the period, he decided. The real test would be the five days that were coming up, though. Most DORs were going to happen then, they always did.

Chegwidden read the files through carefully, noting each instructors impressions as he flipped through.

The First Boat Crew had lost four of the nine DORs, literally the highest ratio Chegwidden had seen, though not quite the highest he’d heard of. Urgayle laid it pretty much on Foley and Lehane, The two of them set a damned high pace and the instructors had to push that crew a great deal harder to keep them even remotely challenged.

Lehane’s attitude was pure poison according to all reports so far, Jordan O’Neil’s on record comments made it clear that she wanted Lehane out of the program before the girl’s poison spread. Chegwidden noted it, but also knew that Jordan was a strong supporter of women in the teams as well as other Special Forces groups and that made her, odd as it seemed, biased heavily against Lehane.

To Jordan, Faith Lehane was just the kind of example people would use to return to the men’s only club, a goal that more than a couple people highly prized. Chegwidden himself was no fan of women serving in front line units, especially the special forces. He even admitted to himself that a certain part of that was because he was an old fashioned chauvinist of sorts, but there were damned good tactical and strategic reasons for it as well.

Distracting other soldiers, who were as uncomfortable working with women as the Admiral was sending them, wasn’t the least of them either. Women could scream ‘get over it!’ all they liked, but if less than one percent of the soldiers on the front line posed a serious distraction to the other 99%, Chegwidden was going to pull them the hell off the line.

In this case, though, he couldn’t agree with Jordan’s evaluation. Not quite yet anyway.

They’d lost a few men who might otherwise have passed, but hell if they couldn’t handle working with a hard case, then they probably couldn’t deal with half the contacts Seal Units had to deal with in the field anyway. He’d sacrifice a few trainees time to give a fighter like Lehane a shot at it.

So far, he knew though, Urgayle had actually been holding back on Lehane. Her initial reactions had scared the Master Chief, Chegwidden believed. Not for himself or his safety, but for hers. Urgayle’s notes listed at least three times when she had been seen staring into a mirror for hours after lights out, just staring.

Next week, the kid gloves were coming off again though. Chegwidden had made that an order, even though Urgayle had already stated his intentions to do the same. If she was going to break, they had to know. What better time than Hell Week?

Sunday Evening

Hell Week

The count was around a hundred and thirty, those were the people who showed up after the weekend off waiting for Hell week to start. They’d gathered nervously on the beach, some watching the stars, some nursing drinks they’d brought with them from earlier in the afternoon. No one was drunk, or even close, but a few bottles of beer were scattered through the crowd.

A lot of conversations were held, the volume low as some people were curled up in sleeping bags as they tried to get in the last little bits of sleep that they could. Xander wasn’t trying, he’d drifted off a lot earlier and was still fading in and out of a semi-doze. Sleeping whenever he could was a habit he’d picked up in Sunnydale, usually it involved classes and tests, but the tension was the same thing anyway.

Ok, not quite. Here he actually gave a damn on how things turned out, not something he’d always felt in class.

Faith was sitting a little distance from him, with her boat crew this time, Sarah Bailey by her side as they talked softly. Whenever he slipped up from the doze he registered her voices, confirming that she hadn’t moved. Then he’d slip off again.

Issues with Faith? Nah.

Dade Murphy was beside him, trying to do the same because Xander had told him to, but he moved too much to be getting any kind of sleep, good or bad. Around him, the rest of his boat crew were lounging, sitting, or laying, either trying to rest or given up on it as they waited.

The explosions were the first warning any of them had that the waiting was over.

Sand and smoke blew into the air, raining down on them as automatic weapons fire roared over their heads. The Instructors swarmed from nowhere, yelling as they descended on the group like vengeful demons from the pits themselves.

Xander had been in one of his doze periods when it hit, and he went from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye. A shadowy figure rushing him as he awoke caused him to snap up as his open sleeping bag went the other way, his legs scissoring the figure’s legs as he moved on instinct, bringing him down.

Hawkins picked his face out of the sand, glaring over at Xander, “Oh you’re gonna pay for that, Xan!”

Xander blinked, remembering where he was in that moment as he spared a glance around the beach briefly. This class included a great many combat veterans, and more than one of them had reacted in exactly the same way he had.

Faith had put Master Chief Urgayle into the dirt before realizing what was going on, and he could see another two instructors in the same position, while a half dozen others had taken down their students in reaction to the moves. Urgayle didn’t seem to be holding a grudge, from what Xander could tell anyway, but that was only cause he pretty much always looked like an asshole.

“I hope you enjoyed that Convict!” Urgayle snarled, snapping his legs out and dropping the surprised Slayer to her ass as her feet were swept from under her, “Cause you’re gonna be paying for that little bit of fun for the next five and half days!”

Xander would have continued watching, but Hawkins’ had him by the back of his white shirt, hauling him up from his crouched position as he shoved him ahead of the group.

“Move your ASS!”

Automatic weapons fire rang in their ears as commands echoed through bullhorns and grenade simulators roared like the wrath of an angry god. Confusion was rampant, most of the groups were screwed up, trying to figure out where they were supposed to be. Xander grabbed Dade as the young man stumbled in front of him, turning him around, “Grab Terry and stick with me!”

Dade shook his head, reaching out and grabbed the next man by the shirt, yanking him along as they were pushed through the crowds. Xander kept reaching out into the mess, seemingly at random as far as Dade could tell, and plucked another member of their crew out of the throngs. Dimly the young hacker could see John O’Neill doing the same not too far away, trying to get the other members of his crew together.

Crew Two was the first assembled, then Crew One, and the rest began getting their acts together shortly after even as Hawkins and Urgayle had them down in the sand, doing pushups. They did so many that Dade would have lost count except for the screaming voice that tallied off every one, then hands reached down and pulled them up.

He felt himself thrown backwards, back into the surf as a wave crashed down over his head and all he could do was let out a breath of shock as the cold water hit his sweating body. Salt water poured in his mouth, and almost down his throat and into his lungs before Dade managed to cut off that instinctive reaction.

Lost in the dark surf, Dade felt like he was a thousand miles out to see for a moment, then an arm reached out and hooked into his, the crook pulling him up enough for him to get his head above water. Coughing and sputtering he looked over to see Xander looking over at him, “You ok?”

Dade nodded, “Thanks.”

“No prob.”

A foot in Xander’s chest prevented any further communication as Dale Hawkins snarled down at Xander, “You think it was funny putting me in the dirt, Maggot!?”

Xander grinned up at him, teeth bared, “Aye Lieutenant, I thought it was fucking hilarious!”

<Oh God,> Dade cringed. Xander was going to get them all killed.

“Come on Convict!” Urgayle snarled, “Put some muscle into it!”

Faith gritted her teeth, feeling the sand grind against the enamel as she struggled to get her end of the long section of telephone pole up into the air with her free hand. Urgayl was behind her, twisting her left hand behind her back, applying enough pressure top bring her to her toes every time she thought she had it.

“I thought you were some kind of super bitch, Convict! Can’t deal with a little pain!?” Urgayle snarled right in her ear, “Well tough titties Convict, Life is PAIN! Get that pole up there, you’re letting your crew down, convict!”

Faith strained hard, forcing her right hand up, trying to keep the end up. The rest of her crew were huddled up tightly on Foley at the other end of the log, putting most of the weight right on her, and she was breathing hard, nostrils flaring as she tried to draw in air in both anger and exertion.

She could see Johnny, the scrawny little kid looking over his shoulder, and his lips were moving. She tuned out Urgayle’s curses and put downs, listening as his voice came in clear.

“Hold it steady guys... She’s almost got it. Don’t jerk it around.... steady.... steady...”

Her eyes flared, and she nodded as she straightened her arm out, balancing that big bastard on her fingertips as she tried to match the reach of the much taller guys in her crew. Urgayle was still yelling, and she could feel her arm screaming in the distance as he twisted it harder, but she kept that thing in place until suddenly the pressure was gone and her arm was free.

“And down!”

The log hit the sand with a screeching thud as they tossed it, but there was no time to relax.

“Pick it up!”

For a moment they thought they’d heard wrong, but apparently not. The crew bent down, lifting the large chunk of log up again.

“Follow me!” Urgayle snarled, taking off at a jog.

They hesitated only for a second before starting off as a group, trying to job in time to the Master Chief.

Thoroughly soaked, sand having infiltrated every access, crevice, and orifice they had, Xander and his crew were pulled up out of the surf and run a mile up the beach, turned around, and run back.

Hawkins ran them back to their boat, and in a few moments they were kitted out with helmets and life jackets and were rushing into the water with the zodiac held up between them.

Another four groups were doing the same, pushed into the black waters by screaming instructors, the only hints they had of the surf being the crashing sounds echoing through the night.

“Board!” Xander called as he and Franklin Mann steadied the zodiac. The others scrambled aboard as Xander glanced over and nodded to Franklin.

The Navy Seaman nodded, hauling himself out of the hip deep water and swinging his legs over the rubber sides in a single smooth motion. Xander kicked off the ground, heaving himself up a moment later, just in time to hear someone scream out, “Wave!”

He wrapped his arms into the rope that lined the sides, suddenly being pitched vertical as white water tugged at his legs, pulling him off. His grip slipped as the craft topped the wave, but as he began to slide off, hands reached out and grabbed his jacket tightly.

They crashed down, a sickening moment of freefall punctuated by raining water and a slamming crash into the water on the other side of the wave. Xander nodded gratefully as Franklin and Dade pulled him aboard, but didn’t say anything as he yanked his oar out of where it had been locked and waved it over his head.

“Let’s move!”

The action was insane, the start of Hell week always was, but for every instructor actively chasing down a person or crew, there were two more watching carefully. They were half looking for people who might be seriously injured or in danger of becoming thus, and half looking for slackers.

Every class had them, guys who moved through the motions and let the rest of the team take up the slack as they seemed to put in an effort. Weeding them out was just as important as training those who were there to work for it.

When your life was on the line, you didn’t trust it to an engine that wasn’t firing on all cylinders.

They’d find them all, though. Hell Week alone would get most of the useless bastards, even if the instructors weren’t there to spot them. People like that weren’t the type who could hack what was coming.

Commander Curran checked his clipboard as he observed the activity, checking off names as an Ensign followed along behind him.

“NVDs.” He said, holding out his hands.

“Sir.” The rating responded, dropping the Gen Three Night Vision Device into his palm.

Curran held the binocular electronics up to his eyes, watching the boat crews doing their nighttime surf evolution. They weren’t bad, he could see Harris’ group out ahead of the rest. They hadn’t lost anyone overboard when they breached the surf zone.

Luck or skill, they were ahead of the pack for now.

He handed the NVDs back to the ensign and walked down the beach to where Crew One was heaving their chunk of telephone pole down in order to pick up their own zodiac. With Foley and Lehane there wasn’t much effort to it, under normal circumstances, but Curran knew that running anywhere with a chunk of pole like that wasn’t only about strength. If you ran too fast, or too slow, you were going to fuck up the rhythm of the entire group, and that would wear everybody down all the faster.

Urgayle was on their ass as they ran back up the beach, this time with the heavy zodiac in the place of the pole. They looked alert, fit, and ready for more.

Curran grinned tightly.

He’d be damned interested to see how they looked after thirty six hours straight of lugging either that pole or the boat wherever they went.

In the distance, the bell started to ring.

Hawkins was waiting for Xander and his boat crew when they paddled back in, immediately hustling them out of the boat in hip deep water, and chasing after them as they hefted the rubber raft and ran it up to the steel pier.

“Strip down, you people are a disgrace!” Hawkins snarled, causing them to jump as they pulled off their life jacket, wet BDU pants, t-shirt and then, on further order, underwear along with it.

Stripped completely down, they lay shivering on the floating steel docks as Hawkins and the other instructors turned the hose on them, flushing them all with cold water until they were so numb they could barely feel the cascading wetness any longer.

Shoulder to shoulder they were all shivering as Urgayle frogmarched Crew one along, and through the spraying water Xander could see they were carrying the chunk of telephone pole along with them.

“Siddown!” He snarled, dropping crew one, along with the pole, just a few feet away as Hawkins kicked Dade over the side of the pier, then turned on Xander.

Xander rolled with the kicks, falling over the side and into the deep water that lay off the pier, bobbing up to start treading water as the next member of his crew were sent in after him.

As the pier cleared, he could hear Urgayle ordering Crew One to strip down.

“You got a problem with that Convict!?”

Xander chuckled as he continued to tread water, Faith’s reply echoing off the pier so that pretty much everyone heard it.

“If you wanted a peep show, Master Chief, you just had to ask.”

Men were chuckling around him as Xander’s limbs kept moving, keeping him afloat, while he shook his head. Faith was, and always would be, Faith.

Urgayle apparently didn’t have a quick comeback or put down for that one, as he was moving along to the others.

“What about you, PJ Boy!? What’s taking you so fucking long!? Strip down and lay on the deck!”

Sarah Baily fumbled with her clothes, her fingers as numb as her mind. She didn’t believe she was doing this. Stripping in front of more than a hundred guys, not that most of them were in any shape to admire the view, it wasn’t natural. Her fingers continued to fumble though, stripping her pants off even as her mind rebelled, but it wasn’t until her bra and panties hit the deck that she really *realized* that she’d already stripped while debating the issue.

So used to following orders now she was on the deck, sandwiched between two shivering guys as the cold water hose was turned on them all, and suddenly her nudity really didn’t make one ounce of difference anymore.

Her stomach muscles clenched and unclenched so fast that she felt like she’d just done a thousand sit-ups all at once, or had been laughing really hard for at least ten minutes. So hard that it was painful now, but she couldn’t stop shivering even so.

The abuse continued on through t’ill morning when they all were marched into the mess hall and stuffed with literally as much steaming hot food as they could manage to get down. After that, the abuse started up again with gusto.

By the middle of monday morning, the bell was ringing with regular frequency, the sound cutting through the remaining people as they continued to work. They could feel their own future in each reverberating sound, though they refused to even contemplate it on the surface of their minds.

The remaining trainees treaded water, were hosed down, were thrown in the surf, and then got up and picked up log or boat and ran up the beach. They’d drop off their albatross, whether it be boat or pole, and bolt through the obstacle course, trying to stay focused as the first twitches of sleep deprivation began to encroach on their minds.

Three more guys were injured, sliding from wet beams and breaking or spraining legs and ankles in the mud below. Twenty had rang the bell by the time they were permitted to break for supper on Monday evening. Again, the food was hot and plentiful, and they all ate their fill while half sleeping through the meal.

Monday evening they were run back out into the waves, paddling through the surf as the ten foot breakers swept them from their boats and into the surf. They’d be tumbled around in the white water, getting sand pumped into every crack and crevice of their bodies, then the waves would spit them out on shore where the instructors were waiting.

That evening the bell again rang with predictable regularity, and the freezing candidates would watch from the surf zone as the quitters were wrapped in warm wool blankets, steaming cups of coffee shoved into their hands.

“Come on, Convict!” Urgayle bellowed, his face only inches from Faith’s ear as she shivered on the steel pier, cold water cascading over her naked body as he held the hose over her head, making her close her eyes and breath through the falling water. “You know you’re gonna quit, Convict! It’s just a matter of time... save yourself the pain!”

She shook her head, shaking the water off as she gasped in a breath of air and water. She couldn’t believe how cold she was, she hadn’t felt anything like it since she’d been called. After becoming a Slayer, nothing seemed to phase her. She’d slept outside in the buff in the wilds, slept on the streets of Boston in early spring before Linda had found her, nothing phased her, but now she was shuddering uncontrollably as the steel pier sucked the heat out from her body, and the water just washed whatever was left away.

Faith was alone in her own personal hell.

“I can’t do this...” Dade got out, shuddering as his teeth clattered together, “T-this i-sn’t m-m-me, d-dude...”

Xander didn’t open his mouth, he kept his jaw clenched to keep his teeth from chattering, “Hang on, man.”

“I-it’s j-j-just m-m-Monday, man...” Dade returned, treading water beside Xander as the instructors shouted from the pier above. “I c-c-can’t do th-this unt-t-till Friday!”

Xander twisted in place, his limbs moving in an automatic motion that no longer needed orders from his mind to maintain, catching her crew mate’s eye, “Just keep going till you can’t, Dade... Then let me know.”

“W-w-why?”

“Just do it.”

Dade kept on treading water, but nodded.

Xander turned back, trying to ignore the fact that his own limbs felt like they were going to fall off. It was about twenty four hours now, since he’d last slept, but he wasn’t tired yet. Scooby patrols had trained him to stay away long hours, and he knew that Dade wasn’t tired yet either. Not sleepy tired, anyway. They were both worn down, barely able to function on the levels they normally considered minimal functionality, but in many ways they were both ahead of most of the rest of the crew.

Dade was just feeling the burn, like Xander himself, but there were a couple guys behind them that looked like the living dead. Lack of sleep was what was getting to them, and Xander was keeping one eye over his shoulder as he tread just for cases like what was just happening.

Franklin Mann went under, just for a second his face a rigor of pain as a cramp hit him. The constant motion and freezing cold was pure hell on muscles, and the Navy man went under briefly as his back cramped up.

He came back up sputtering as Xander reached out and grabbed him by the jaw, lifting his head above water.

“Mann!” An instructor screamed from a boat, “What the hell are you doing!? Treading water means you keep your head above the surface, what are you, stupid!?”

“S-s-sorry, Petty Officer, Sir...” Mann stammered out as Xander helped him keep his head above water. “I-i-it’s my back, Sir!”

“Do I look like I give a shit!? You wanna quit, boy!?”

Franklin shook his head, “No Sir!”

“Then Harris better stop coming on to you and let you get back to work!”

“Hooyah, Sir!” Franklin yelled, nodded to Xander as he pulled back.

Xander cast him a questioning glance, and Mann just nodded back gratefully, and then they returned to treading water.

By Tuesday morning, any advantage scooby patrols had given him were long worn off and Xander was stumbling through the motions just like everyone else. They shuffled along now, carrying their boat everywhere they went, barely awake and feeling nothing but cold and pain.

The sand in their clothes combined with the water to chafe their skin off places none of them wanted to think about, and they were well on their way to developing the ‘Hell Week Shuffle’ in an attempt at self defense, moving in such a way to keep their clothing from rubbing too much against their skin.

To those who were moving there only seemed to be two sounds in the whole world, the screaming instructions coming from the instructors, and the soul piercing ring of that god damned brass bell.

Crew Two staggered out of the water, the third time they’d done surf penetration in the past two hours, and staggered up the beach as Hawkins’ run along behind them. Xander supposed the man must be sleeping sometime, but his fuzzy mind couldn’t think of a time that the Navy Lieutenant hadn’t been screaming along side him.

They dropped the boat on his orders and then shuffled over to their log as Hawkins run along side.

“Down the beach!” He called, “One mile run!”

The guys groaned, bending down to pick up the log, but Xander just knocked them away, shaking his head. “He didn’t say nothing about picking that fucker up.”

They stared, a little dumbly, at him, but as Xander started to run down the beach the meaning penetrated. They hesitated, glancing at Hawkins who was glaring at then, then Dade broke ranks and jogged after Xander. After that it was only a few seconds before the rest followed suit.

Hawkins watched them go, grinning in their wake as Curran came up behind him.

“They noticed, huh?”

“Xander did.” Hawkins grinned, “That guy’s gonna make it, Curran.”

“Maybe.” Curran said, something in his voice turning Hawk around.

“What’s up?”

“We lost another couple guys from Crew one.”

Hawkins winced, that would bring that crew way under strength. “Those were all tough guys.”

Curran nodded.

“What are we going to do with them?”

The Commander considered it, then shrugged, “When Crew Two gets back from their run, let them grab twenty minutes shut eye by the fire... Then we’re gonna roll Crew one into Crew two.”

Hawkins stared, “Are you nuts!? Jesus, Curran, Xan’s keeping his team tight! They only lost two guys! Two! Total! Are you trying to wash him out!? What about the rest of them? There’s some good guys in that crew!”

“If they look ragged, swap them to another crew,” Curran said, “Good guys, or good leader... Time to find out.”

Hawkins shook his head, looking pissed off.

“Lehane and those other freakshows better be worth it, Curran,” He growled.

“If they’re not, we haven’t lost much. Those guys want it bad enough, they’ll try again. If not?” Curran shrugged, “Then it wasn’t meant to be.”

Hawk shook his head, walking off, leaving Curran standing near the blazing fire they kept burning during Hell Week, wondering the same things his Lieutenant was wondering actually. Only a fool gave up any advantage, but every edge came with a cost. Some costs were too high, when it was all calculated out.

Would Lehane and the rest fall into that category?

Time was the only way any of them were going to tell.

******

Twenty minutes of shut eye didn’t sound like much, but when it was doled out as meanly as any rest time was allowed during Hell Week, it was the nectar of the gods themselves. Crew Two accepted it gratefully, slumping down by the fire and dropping off almost immediately.

The noise, shouting, and sheer motion around them just faded into the background, accepted by each man as simply the way the world was.

Of course, twenty minutes really wasn’t much, and it was over almost as soon as it started.

“Come on, you lazy bastards!” Master Chief Urgayle snarled, “Up and at ‘em!”

Team Two shifted, clapping each other on the shoulders as they groaned and climbed to their feet. Across the flames they could see what was left of Team One struggling with Old Misery, the short little bastard of a log that weighed probably three times what one of the normal telephone poles did.

“What are you waiting for, you pansies!? An invitation!?” Urgayle snarled, “You gonna give em a hand, or what?”

Most of the guys blinked, confused. So far Team One hadn’t gotten a hand from anyone, it simply hadn’t been done, but before their fogged minds really finished catching up to that thought, Xander Harris just shouted, “Hoo Yah, Master Chief!”

Then he was across the fires, bracing up the log as he pushed in behind Faith, taking up the very back of the heavy chunk of wood. The others stared for only a split second before all screaming a repeat of Xander’s words and running into place.

“Funny meeting you here, X,” Faith groaned out, weary and feeling the strain despite her Slayer strength.

Xander chuckled dryly, “I was just thinking the same thing bout you, F. You’re looking good.”

“Liar.” Faith muttered dryly, but grinned as she heaved Old Misery up a bit higher as the rest of the guys crowded in tightly around them.

“I hope you lazy bastards enjoyed your little sleep,” Urgayle growled as he walked around the newly merged crew, “Those of you who listened to orders well enough to deserve one that is! Cause we’re gonna have one FINE day ahead of us!”

He paused, taking a deep breath, and grinned all around, “It’s eight AM Tuesday morning, maggots! Do you know where your pillows are!?”

The morning both blurred past and dragged on, a bizarre combination that screwed with the minds of most of the men who were still hanging on. They couldn’t really seem to stay in any given moment, but to say that meant that time was flying would be a lie of the highest order. Every second dragged on for an eternity, and yet not one of the men involved could really stop and focus on the passage of time.

They did drown proofing drills, bobbing up and down in the pool water with their hands tied behind their backs. In Faith and Jake’s case this meant having their limbs bound with high tensile steel cable, links locked in place with steel rings that would have to be cut off when they were done. For the rest, rope was enough, though Master Chief Urgayle suspected that Sarah Bailey could have shredded the rope easily enough if she wanted.

Which, if he were right, meant that she was holding back.

He didn’t know whether to be impressed or frustrated by that. She worried him more than the rest of the so called ‘freakshow’. Fawkes was going to crack, that’s what he figured. The guy was tough, and had a stubborn determination about him, but he hadn’t recovered from his near drowning nearly as well as he put forward. The See-Thru dude shook when they were tying his hands behind him this time, and while Urgayle commended his guts to go through this again, he also could see the cracks forming.

Foley was hard to pin down, but Urgayle knew he was going to have to start cracking the whip on that boy soon. He was taking all of it just a little too easily, and his body wasn’t showing the signs of stress that should be there. That meant that the little freaknut things in his blood were artificially propping the kid up.

Unfortunately that meant that the kid wasn’t really experiencing any benefit, and he was almost through his second day of Hell Week. Since Urgayle had already figured out three ways to disable or otherwise neutralize the kids enhancements, that wasn’t going to do at all.

Lehane, well she was starting to strain. It wasn’t the work that was getting to her, though, Urgayle could see that. It was the lack of sleep, it was fogging the girl’s mind, starting to make her irrational. It wasn’t the full effect of Hell Week, but with this bunch, he was willing to take what he could get.

The Master Chief walked along the pool as Sarah bailey swam passed, noting that while she wasn’t going really fast, she was going faster than her moves would suggest. She was the one that was worrying him, because he really didn’t have a handle on what she could do. That really bothered him badly.

The rest were moving along more or less expected paths. Urgayle had seen all kinds, and there were some damned good kids in this bunch despite the trouble ones.

John O’Neill was coming along nicely, the PJ brat had started to pull together better after the first couple weeks of Basic Conditioning. Urgayle had also noted that he’d tried his best to put forward some leadership with his crew, but hadn’t gotten far with it.

Bailey and Foley basically listened to anyone, but no one else paid any attention to what they thought. Lehane didn’t listen to anyone, even though a couple of the guys had tried to include her in their discussions. The rest of the military types that started with Crew One had at least four years of apparent age on O’Neill and they weren’t going to listen to a little punk who had an Air Force fixation.

A couple of the others had put up some attempts at turning the crew into a coherent team, but they’d mostly failed and DORed shortly after trying. There were too many troubles in Crew One for most guys to manage, and Urgayle knew that most of them were centered right around Lehane.

Most of the rest of them, even the ‘Specials’, were sociable. They tended to talk a little at least, get to know the other people in the group. Lehane blew them all off, and even when she didn’t actively do that, she put out an invisible field that just basically screamed ‘leave me the fuck alone’.

Urgayle had seen guys like that before, of course, The Seals were a magnet for guys like that. Lone Rambo types who thought they could do anything on their own. Most of them washed out before Hell Week even started, none of them made it to Wednesday. Washing out Lehane, though, was a challenge. Physically, there was nothing they could do to her that could seem to dent her personal strength. Mentally, he was pushing as hard as he could already. There were cracks forming in the young woman, but they were hairline right now, nothing major.

And that was the way he wanted it too. If she did turn out to be worth salvaging, he didn’t want irreparable damage done to the bitch.

So Urgayle was watching Harris with some interest now.

The kid had a few qualities that attracted his attention early on, so he’d asked the Commander to roll him into Crew One when it became feasible.

First, Harris had the makings of a leader.

It’s true, he wasn’t a born leader. Not by a long shot. Frankly, the kid needed a good kick in the ass, or a shot of confidence in the arm. But he did have an eye to looking out for his team, and that was a foundation Urgayle could work with.

Second, he had a history with Lehane, and had already proved that he didn’t take shit from anyone.

So maybe, just maybe, he might be able to do something with the otherwise crumbling ‘Specials’ that were struggling along through Seal Training as lone wolves.

And finally, Urgayle had to get the kid away from Hawkins. The Lieutenant was a good guy, but he liked the kid too much. He’d probably take it easy on him if Harris started to flag, and that was no way to harden the kid.

Urgayle just felt bad for the rest of the Crew Two bastards, cause things were gonna get worse before they got better.

Dade Murphy reached the surface choking, spitting up water before managing to take a breath. The air filled his lungs as he sucked it in greedily, taking some chlorinated water in with it. He choked again, falling back into the water, sinking the nine feet to the bottom.

<I can’t do this... I can’t do this...> Dade thought, kicking off the bottom.

It was excruciating, his eyes felt like they’d had sand poured into them, but Christ to close them was to invite sleep, and he’d drown if he dozed off in a freaking pool! He breached the surface again, sucking down air as quick as he could, eyes on the Master Chief as he circled the pool.

<Say time. Fuck, Say time!> Dade thought, sinking again.

At least the pool was warm, it was the closest Dade could now remember to being warm. He knew that he’d been warm only a couple days earlier, but that seemed impossibly long before now.

Dade kicked off the bottom again, trying to focus on the reasons he was enduring this, but he had a hard time imagining them now.

<Money... I think... Flipping burgers... God, no more flipping burgers...> He shook his head, sucking in more air.

<Flipping anything is better than this!> He thought as his feet touched bottom again and he pushed up, <I... I can’t do this anymore.>

As he reached the surface he opened his mouth, started to yell out the words to quit, but he remembered something then, a promise.

Just tell me first.

<Tell Xander...> Dade thought, looking around for the other man.

Xander was just a few feet off, kicking off the bottom, so Dade followed suit. He breached a few seconds later, turning to face Xander who was looking right at him.

He shook his head, “Xan, I can...”

Xander seemed to smile, but it was hard to tell under the mask, his head almost moving from side to side, but before Dade could finish, he sunk back under.

<Fuck!> Dade screamed mentally, sucking in air as he went under.

He motioned wildly as best he could, trying to get Xander’s attention, but when they surfaced a moment later, the same damn thing happened.

Dade groaned, sinking back under the surface in frustration.

The cat and mouse game continued for three more cycles before Dade caught Xander above the water long enough to say something.

“Fuck, Xander, I can’t do...”

“TIME!”

Dade blinked, twisting in the water as the Master Chief called time and everyone stopped bobbing and started the five minute float. Dade rolled slowly over onto his back, regulating his breathing as he let his limbs relax as best he could.

A hundred meter swim followed the floatation segment, everyone in the pool kicking along clumsily with their hands behind their backs, barely able to get any motion. Well, most of them. Sarah Baily and Xander Harris consistently lapped the others, easily managing the swim, though Xander lost part of his lunch in the pool again, much to the loud and verbal disgust of the Master Chief.

After that they were stopped, and sent back to the bottom to retrieve various objects from the bottom with their teeth until the rest of the crew caught up. As each person finished, they two were on retrieval duty, picking up pucks and sticks and whatever else from the bottom.

Master Chief Urgayle paused as Faith struggled with a particularly misshapen object, snarling at her as she came up for breath, “Come on, Bitch! You can’t tell me you haven’t got experience with your mouth, Convict!”

Faith glared at him, but dove again, and retrieved the object this time, dropping it on the edge as she smiled dangerously up at him.

“Most guys would be careful about teaching me to use my *Teeth*, Master Chief!”

Urgayle just sneered back, “I’m not most guys, Convict. I pack a lot more than you could chew.”

Faith snorted, kicking back out, and dove to retrieve the next object.

******

Rock Portage was a fast grueling affair that basically amounted to sprinting as a team across slippery ocean swept rocks with their own personal zodiac banging against their limbs with every step, and actively trying to knock half of them into the jagged surface with each misstep. As teams, the crews went through, moving as quickly as they could, and despite the best protective boots, and most fierce training, portage claimed five men on Tuesday alone, putting them in the infirmary, and out of BUD/s.

“Slow DOWN!” Xander screamed as Crew One moved across the rocks, a sudden swing of the raft almost taking out his entire side as the heavy rubber banging up against their legs.

The fast sprint had started well enough, but sudden jerks forward and back were solid evidence that the crew had yet to figure out how to run in time. Foley and Faith pulled ahead, while the slower members pulled back, resulting in a dangerous jerking swing that had the momentum and inertia of the entire boat.

Xander reached out, just catching Franklin Mann before he was knocked off the rocks and into the pounding sea below. “God damn it, stop jerking the damn boat!”

“Tell those two freaks to stop yanking so hard!,” One of the men growled from two spaces behind Xander, only to find Xander’s hand around his throat a second later.

Xander pulled him in close, until he was eye to eye with the man, one of the few military guys left from Crew One’s original complement. Xander’s eyes flicked over his features before he spoke, “You were with the Initiative, right Soldier?”

The guy barely managed to nod, Xander hadn’t removed his hand from the guys throat.

“Thought I recognized you,” Xander hissed. “So now you know me, you don’t get to call anyone here a freak, you steroid popping, frankenstein making, soldier of a bitch.”

The guy flushed, catching every reference Xander made. “Sorry Sir.”

Xander pushed off, moving aback around. “Alright... Again! Smoothly on three!”

Behind them, unnoticed, Master Chief Urgayle let go of the arm of one of the instructors, shaking his head and waving the man away.

They completed the portage, but came in dead last when compared to the other crews, something that had been happening pretty much all day.

“Punishment detail!” Urgayle called, “Boat squat!”

They groaned, but hefted the heavy zodiac over their heads, holding it up without hands that way, and squatted down halfway, their legs shaking from the strain.

Beside them, the other boat crews stood with their boats resting on their heads, holding position as the instructors walked around.

Sam Winchester groaned as his legs burned with fire, shaking against the strain of holding position with the heavy zodiac braced on his head.

It was well into Tuesday night, or Wednesday morning depending how you looked at it, and since Sunday evening he thought that maybe they’d gotten an hour of sleep. Maybe.

All of it had been over the past twenty hours or so, but none of it really felt like sleep to him. He was just going through the paces now, barely able to remember not to move when they let him rest. The shouting died back into a din in the background, barely noticed as he tumbled from one place to another, trying to keep up with the guys around him.

He couldn’t remember ever feeling this screwed up, this completely and totally trashed. And, given his brother’s lean toward occasional excesses that he was often dragged into, that was something of a revelation to the young demon hunter. For the millionth time he asked himself what possible purpose could this insanity serve? If he were in the field now, tracking some insane demon or spirit, the fucking thing would have him for lunch.

He couldn’t think! He could barely keep moving.

The only thing he heard anymore was that bell.

It sang to him sometimes, cut through him others.

Freedom. Failure. Freedom. Failure.

Each reverberation carried both tones to him, tempting him and warning him with the same sound.

Freedom. Failure. Freedom. Failure.

Darien Fawkes glanced down at his wrist, eyeing the tattoo of the snake eating it’s own tail. It was half red now, though he hadn’t actually attempted to go see through since his last injection. The stress brought the quicksilver out, and it leaked from his pores despite his attempts to control it.

Sometimes the first and only hint he had that he was starting to shift was the Master Chief cursing him out, occasionally planting a boot into whatever part of his anatomy was easily available, and telling him that if he went see through it was the last thing he’d do.

Scary part was, Fawkes believed the guy.

He was so goddamned tired though, so tired that he didn’t remember who he was sometimes. It was strange, like waking up from a dream and not being able to tell dream world from reality for a few seconds. Then, even after he knew the difference, the dream world still seemed so damned real.

Of course, it was a nightmarish hell hole, both in dreaming and waking.

They ran through the O Course, now so used to doing it that even as they shambled along, barely able to put one foot in front of the other, they still kept up their times as the walked across the beams, went hand over hand across the demo-pit, and crawled down in the mud under the rope net.

At some point, perhaps around the time he’d nearly drowned, Darien had decided that he was never going to even think of stealing anything again. If he’d had a respectable job, he’d never had wound up with the gland, and sure as hell would never had would up in this shit hole.

Now, the only thing that kept him going was the fact that he had to get the damned thing out of him.

Two years, maybe three on the outside.

That kept going around and around in his head.

Two years, maybe three.

Then he’d become immune to the counteragent, while the leash Arnaud had shoved up his ass, so to speak, continued to dribble into his system, eventually driving him psychotic, then killing him.

Darien snorted, amused through the fatigue. The others were struggling through for their own reasons he knew, they really wanted to be Seals or whatever. He was fighting for his life.

He couldn’t crack.

He wouldn’t crack.

Darien Fawkes didn’t want to die.

Fatigue.

It used to be a word.

So did magic.

Sarah Bailey was just figuring out the first was a very real condition in ways she’d never imagined, just as she’d once discovered the same about the second.

She couldn’t hold control over any of her ‘common’ spells anymore, though. She’d lost the thread of many that she’d been using to stay alert, the depth of the strain burrowing deep into her mind and soul until it plucked the magic out of her.

She was cold and tired, and she just wanted to quit.

She didn’t need this. She didn’t need any of these people.

She was the most powerful witch she’d ever run across, she...

Sarah blinked away tears that suddenly formed in her eyes, flowing freely down her cheeks.

Oh God, they were dead.

She reached up fast, wiping away the moisture, but it kept pouring out and the only thing she could think was that she hoped her face was dirty enough and wet enough to mask it. That thought made her frown, though.

Why did she care?

For John O’Neill, as he crouched there with the zodiac raft balanced on his head, he felt like he’d never been so cold.

That wasn’t true, actually, but it was how he felt.

Jack O’Neill had damned near froze to death in Antarctica, and had a large number of combat ocean rescues to his name as a former member of the Elite Air Force ParaJumpers, or the PJs. He’d been colder a lot.

John shook his head tiredly, trying to think.

Hadn’t he?

No, He hadn’t. He’d spent pretty much HIS entire life in high school chasing Jail bait.

Hot Jailbait.

Very hot...

Why the FUCK was he in the Navy again??

Jake Foley couldn’t keep his right eye from twitching.

It was driving him completely up the wall.

Behind him he could hear the men grumbling softly, under their breath. They thought they were whispering low enough for him to miss it, but he could hear them.

Freak. Monster. Science Experiment.

Worse names.

A lot of them were from the new crew, though they didn’t speak up loud enough for that Harris guy to hear. Neither did the guys who used to say that stuff right out loud and to his face. Not since Harris went to bat for him and Lehane.

Foley wondered if Harris and Lehane knew each other. They seemed to. There was some kind of history there, but tension too. Maybe they used to date and broke up. He didn’t know.

“Are you fucking deaf Foley!!??” Someone shouted as a hand pulled up upright, Jake looked around to see Harris standing behind him.

“Stay alert, man.” was all Harris said.

Foley swallowed and nodded.

They jogged off, punishment detail over, heading for the water for another surf passage evolution.

If only Jake could get his right eye to stop twitching.

They were off punishment detail, finally. Five minutes of a half crouch with that damned boat resting on their heads was more than enough. Xander’s neck was stiff and sore, and his legs felt like wet noodles someone had lit fire too.

He’d gone past the need for sleep hours earlier, and was now stumbling along with the rest of the group as they began to strip down again, this time to don wet suits for the four mile swim. Four miles, after more than forty eight hours on their feet. Xander wanted nothing more than to curl up in a warm bed after a hot shower and sleep for a week or so.

Not that he could do that though.

A single glance around the men and women he was working with told him that they were at least as worn out as he was, and there were dangerous stresses on the group. Some of the guys had thought they’d gotten away with their childish name calling, whispering low enough that he didn’t hear them. But he had. Over the ringing of that GODDAMN FUCKING bell...

Xander paused, taking a couple breaths.

Another problem was that his mental state was rapidly losing any rational capabilities whatsoever, and sometimes he felt like ripping some of the guy’s tongues out, or grabbing an M16 and blowing that FUCKING bell to little bronze shards.

Xander pulled the hood up over his head, tucking his ears carefully under the neoprene as he straightened up, reminding himself that it was just one week.

One week for the rest of his life.

Fair trade.

He glanced around, noting that everyone else was about ready. He stepped up beside Fawkes as the man literally shook. Either cold or fear, it was hard to tell. The guy had reason for both, to say the least.

“You good?”

Fawkes shook his head, “I’m a long damn way from being ‘good’.”

Xander nodded, smiling, “I get you. Just don’t go see through. K?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I know.” Fawkes eyes were on the ocean as the waves came rolling in, and he suddenly turned to look at Xander, “What if I’m not cut out for this?”

“You can do this. It’s just a few days of pain, man.”

“No... No, not this.” Fawkes said, “I mean... THIS. The Military. I don’t even like guns, man. Here I am training to kill...”

“Hey.” Xander reached out, “You’re training to survive. This is a volunteer only unit, let’s worry about your assignment when we pass, alright?”

Fawkes nodded tiredly as Xander let his hand drop to his side.

God he was wiped. He was barely able to remember how to speak, and couldn’t remember what the hell he’d just said to Fawkes. He hoped he hadn’t fucked up and said something stupid.

“In the water!”

The crews sprinted for the water, diving in fast and ducking under a breaker as they began swimming out toward the waiting boats. As soon as he hit the cold of the water, Xander felt awareness return to him, and he began to slip into an instinctive and easy stroke that moved him through the water after the cruising zodiacs.

“This kid was born to swim.” Urgayle decided, watching as Harris and Bailey easily led their crew, and everyone else, in the water.

There was something decidedly unnatural about Bailey’s movement through the water, though. It was like she was getting three times the speed for half the effort. Urgayle bit back an impulse to berate the girl, if only because he couldn’t figure out what the berate her on. BUD/s wasn’t just about abuse, hell it wasn’t about abuse at all.

With one single exception, Urgayle had wanted every single person he’d trained to pass BUD/s. Everything he did to those people was intended to make them stronger, and united with their groups. The one time he did try to break someone, really TRY to break them, he’d run into a person who was at least as tough physically and mentally as he was, and he couldn’t do it.

Jordan O’Neil had been one exceptional bitch, that was certain.

But breaking Bailey wasn’t what he wanted to do here, and that meant he couldn’t just berate her for doing a good job. That would destroy confidence, cohesion, and morale.

So he just watched her flit through the water after the boat with frustrated and offended professionalism.

Harris, on the other hand, there was something almost too natural about him in the water. His motions were fluid and fast, cutting him through the water like a frigate on full steam. The kid was decidedly at ease in the water, and while everyone else was tensing up, Harris was relaxed and getting more so with every stroke.

If Urgayle didn’t know better, he’d think that the kid was actually picking up more and more energy as he swam.

Four miles out, then a brief pause on the other side to eat cold MREs, and then they were jogging back around the beach the long way. Xander started out strong, awake and aware, but that feeling faded fast as they moved and after a mile or so he began to shuffle like everyone else in his crew, barring Faith and Foley.

Foley was started to skip steps too, Xander could see from where he was hanging back. He’d go good for a few steps, then suddenly catch himself as he missed one. Xander couldn’t remember Foley’s file, if he’d ever seen much of it that wasn’t classified, but he had a feeling that whatever the kid was amped up by, it was starting to feel the burn same as everyone else.

Dangerous time.

The words popped into Xander’s head as he jogged, but for a long moment he couldn’t figure out why he’d thought them. It took probably half a mile before he realized that he was thinking that Foley could possibly crash damned hard if he wasn’t watched. Xander closed his eyes, trying to organize his thoughts, but he just couldn’t.

Finally he opened them again, still shuffling along, and let his step drift him out to the side of the group a bit so he could keep an eye on them.

They jogged back into camp a couple hours later, most of them stumbling along, barely able to keep their footing as they stumbled through the motions.

“Rack time!” Urgayle growled in their ears, pointing Crew One to a tent that was setup on the beach. “One hour!”

They stumbled into it gratefully, collapsing into the military cots that lined the large tent. They’d dried off mostly over the long run, but at this point they didn’t care anymore. One by one they all fell into sleep, some deeply, some fitfully.

Most of them dreamed of Seal training, doing Evolutions over and over again as their legs kicked and twitched in the bunks. Some talked, their sleep deprived minds not reacting normally to the sudden granting of sleep, and they usually mumbled incoherently with occasional words like ‘Hooyah’ coming out clear.

Faith dropped off instantly, her body becoming still as death with only the barest hint of breath to show she was still living. She didn’t talk, didn’t move, and didn’t dream.

Xander, however, twitched like most of the others, his legs trying to pump as he ran in his dream, his fatigued brain chemistry unable to quite keep up with the rapid fire neural signals firing through his mind. In the darkness of his thoughts, though, he wasn’t in BUD/s anymore.

Xander ran through the jungle, panic growing in his chest with every step.

It was coming closer, he could feel it as the fear continued to grow.

Branches slapped him in the face as he ran, knocking him back, but he kept pumping his legs. He couldn’t let it catch him.

Somewhere behind him a yipping laugh could be heard, and then a coughing roar, but Xander couldn’t turn to look back. The panic drove him on until, suddenly, the jungle was gone and he burst out onto...

The beach.

Sirens were blaring as Xander woke up, he was already standing with his crew, looking around in confusion.

“Surf Torture!” Urgayle snarled.

They groaned, jogging forward toward the crashing waves, and along the way they learned a hard lesson.

A hour’s sleep wasn’t much help at all.

Master Chief Urgayle sneered as he planted a foot in Lehane’s face, pushing her head under the onrushing wave.

“You have a problem, Convict!?”

She just bubbled and sprayed water from her mouth as the water washed away from her, glaring up at him.

“I told you, Convict, don’t give me those bedroom eyes. You’re not good enough for me.” Urgayle snarled back, satisfied as he saw the physical pain cramp her features.

An hour of sleep wasn’t a gift of kindness from the instructors. It was carefully measured and doled out at a preset time for a reason. Well, a few reasons actually.

First, too much lack of sleep was medically unhealthy. A lot of work was done while a person slept. The body healed itself, it dealt with the events of the day on a neural level, and extended periods without sleep could seriously screw anyone up. About ninety six hours, without a break, and any human would wind up in medical treatment for an extended stay. That wasn’t acceptable for Seal Candidates. They had more work to do after Hell Week was ended, so they had to be more or less healthy when it was over.

However there was another training reason to grant them this hour of much desired rest.

Pain.

An hour just gave the human body time to tense up, for muscles to contract and tighten, for the mind to start to shift into rest mode. So when they had to suddenly get up and work again, they were stiff and in pain so that every motion was torture.

He could see that on Lehane’s face through the anger she had just barely under control.

It was also there on every face in the group, and that was what Urgayle wanted to see. Even Foley was stricken, and the Master Chief felt he’d finally begun to see the limits of the kid’s enhancements.

Normally, after Wednesday, they slacked off on the training a bit. Doing less complicated evolutions, simply for safeties sake. It wasn’t any easier, mind, just less complicated. This time, however, Urgayle wasn’t going to let Crew One do that.

There was too much resting on the heads of some of these people to let up.

He had to see if they were going to break.

The Master Chief made a mental note to keep an eye on the ‘normal’ members of the freakshow, as well as the regular military guys. If they looked like they were going to hurt themselves, or others, he’d shift them over to other teams.

No point in getting anyone killed if it could be helped after all.

He stepped over, looking down to where John O’Neill was gasping for breath as the cold ocean water slapped down over him.

“What’s wrong PJ boy!?” He snarled, planting a boot in O’Neill’s chest and pushing his whole body down into the sand and under the next wave. “You missing your nice, warm, airplane!?”

O’Neill came up out of the wave, spraying water out of his mouth, incidently soaking Urgayle’s upper legs, and glared up at the man, “Sorry Master Chief! Didn’t hear you. I think I had water in my ears!”

As Wednesday wore on, noon coming and going as they worked under the hot sun, the world became black and white for the Candidates. Too hot, they broiled as they did log PT with the Californian sun beaming down on them, or freezing cold as they spent hours being hosed down or treading water or enduring surf torture. Shades of gray were few and far between, moments of transition from one extreme to the other, and yet the bell stopped ringing.

By that night, it had been silent most of the day, and with fifty eight men remaining, none of them were going to give up easy.

The work continued though, grinding even the toughest of them down.

Races were held, and simple drills for most of them, but Team One continued on with the hardest and most complicated drills as they were tested not only on their endurance, but their ability to think under extreme duress.

As the sun fell, they all without exception shuffled wearily, trying to keep their clothes away from their chafed skin, trying to keep the heavy rubber boat away from their legs as it yanked on their arms, and generally just tried to keep moving despite the growing tendency to be muddled and unclear.

For Xander, the passing of time became a constant test. His body was weak and tired, even the cold water now barely woke him from his stupor. Around him he could see that most of the others were in a similar state. Foley had crashed heavy during the day, and even his formidable strength now seemed gone.

O’Neill looked like hell warmed over, then frozen, warmed again, and finally trampled by a brigade or two of infantry. He was still moving, and was able to answer simple questions, but that was about it. Sarah Bailey had lost her cockiness in the pool, and now during drownproofing she was forced to bob like the rest of them, her control over the spell or magic she was using apparently gone.

Xander noted that, somewhere deep in the back of his mind. Lack of sleep apparently disrupted a caster’s ability to do, well pretty much anything. Given Bailey’s apparent power compared to most witches he knew of, he was also willing to bet that she’d lasted longer than most would or could.

He just hoped he remembered it when Hell Week was done.

Winchester and Fawkes were running on nothing more than reflex now, Xander didn’t think they could really do anything more complicated than walking if they actually had to think about it. Only reflex and muscle memory was getting them through their paces, if he was right.

Faith... well, Faith was in better condition than most.

She, like the rest of them, ate four meals a day, but her servings made a mockery of the ‘unlimited’ servings they were offered. After Tuesday, Xander had noticed that the chow hall had tripled the food they prepared, which when you considered the fact that they were cooking for almost a hundred big guys at the time, fucking scared him. He didn’t think Faith was eating that much, but it seemed like it.

Hot food seemed like her source of strength, though. She’d be walking dead when chow time came around, but be raring to go for more when they were done. Xander wasn’t sure how long she could keep it up, cause the strength seemed to burn off faster with every cycle, but for the moment she was the most alert of them all.

That was why he nudged her lightly once when they were allowed a ‘standing sleep’. “F.”

“Yeah, X?” She asked.

Neither of them opened their eyes, they just couldn’t muster the strength for that, and it wasn’t needed anyway.

“Need you to do something for me.” Xander said quietly.

“Name it, X.” She mumbled.

“Look out for the guys.”

There was a pause.

“Huh??” She opened her eyes, looking over to where Xander was starting to fall forward as he almost fell asleep.

He jerked, catching himself, “Sorry... Look out for the guys. Don’t... let em... quit.”

“That ain’t my bag, X.”

“They’re... team.” Xander mumbled, head drooping. “Trust em. Trust you.”

“What are you talking bout, X? You’re doing that job.”

“Gonna keep doing it too...” he said, jerking upright, “Need help.”

“Why me?”

“You’re more awake than anyone else. Gotta be... Slayer... something...” Xander mumbled, “just do it, k?”

Faith watched him warily, not wanting to say yes, not really daring to say no.

“I’ll try.” She said finally.

“You do that... you’ll do fine.”

She started to say something else, but Master Chief Urgayle descended on them then, rushing the group out and towards the O course.

Samuel Winchester was neck and neck with Trevor Simms as the two made their way through the muddy paths of the O course. Neither of them were really able to talk, but they both felt each other’s presence as they approached the demo pit.

The instructors were waiting, of course, lined up around the pit as they approached.

“Here they are, at last,” Urgayle sneered, “You’re holding up the whole crew! If you can’t keep up, just ring the fucking bell and get it over with!”

They didn’t say anything, neither really had the energy to respond anyway.

“Alright... let’s give you boys, and girls,” Urgayle sneered, “A chance to get a little rest... Pick your best man.”

They glanced at each other, gauging each other. Without knowing what the challenge was precisely, picking was largely a matter of luck, but given where they were...

“Faith.” Xander said tiredly, nodding to the woman leaning against a post, just outside of the group. “You’re up.”

Some of the guys looked unhappy about it, but no one argued with Xander either.

Faith shot him a confused glance, then shrugged, “Sure thing, X.”

“Alright, Convict.” Urgayle growled, planting a hand between her shoulder blades. “Out on the ropes. Get out in the middle... then all you gotta do is stay on the ropes for thirty seconds. That easy, convict.”

Faith didn’t have to ask what the catch was, she could see that the ropes were slick with wet mud and other instructors were standing around the pit holding the ends of long ropes attached to various points along the ropes she was supposed to stay on.

“Piece a cake,” She sneered right back at the Master Chief, then made her way out on the two ropes. Her feet clutching the lower one as she moved hand over hand along the upper one.

“Alright...!” Urgayle yelled. “Thirty seconds, starting... NOW!”

The ropes began to jerk before he finished talking, bottom going one way as the top went the other. Faith dug in, holding on with every bit of strength she had left as she heard Xander and Jon move to the edge.

“Come on Faith! You’ve got this one!”

“Hang on!”

A few seconds later other voices joined in. Bailey, Fawkes, even Winchester and Foley. Faith gritted her teeth as the ropes twisted on her, bucking hard, trying to pull out of her grip from both top and bottom.

<Ain’t gonna let go... Ain’t gonna let go...>

By the pit Urgayle watched, not Faith, but her crew as he noted the schism that ran right down the middle. Only about half, if that, showed any interest in supporting her. The rest just watched wearily, as if without care for the outcome.

He watched his clock wind down, passing twenty seconds and knew that she was going to hang on easily through the thirty. He reached down, grasping the hilt of his blade, and at twenty five seconds his arm snapped out and severed the top rope with a single blow.

The line snapped, yanking suddenly way off as another instructor pulled against the no longer resisting rope, and Faith was jerked out from the bottom rope, twisting in mid air and flopping down into the three feet of mud below.

She came up screaming, hand slapping down in the mud as it coated every part of her face and body, scrabbling toward the side.

“Muther fucker!” She screamed, knowing damn well what had happened, and crawled out of the pit, murder in her eyes.

Xander and John intercepted her before she got close enough to lunge at Urgayle, holding her back as she screamed obscenities. Urgayle just watched it emotionlessly until she calmed down.

“If you’re quite finished, by my count that was twenty eight seconds...” He said cooly, “Surf torture.”

Faith was seething, but more in control of herself, and she shook Xander and John off as she took a step backward. As everyone watched, she let out a single blow to her right, splintering the four by four brace the rope had been tied too, sending it, and Urgayle’s knife, down into the mud pit.

The crew, except for Xander, backed uneasily away from her then, eyeing the women they already knew to be strong with something akin to fear or awe.

Urgayle just looked on, unimpressed, “You done?”

After another half hour freezing in the surf, they were given more log PT then sent back to the steel pier for a few rounds of treading water alternated with being sprayed with freezing cold water while what little heat they had left was sucked out of their bones and into the steel under them.

Still, when that was over, the dawn was slowly breaking from the east and it was time for breakfast.

Thursday was beginning and the end of Hell Week was just starting to glimmer out ahead of them.

Faith’s hands shook as she piled food onto her plate, her focus so completely on what she was doing that she failed to notice the gaze she was under from the corner of the mess.

“She’s beginning to crack.” Jordan O’neil said softly as she drank her coffee.

“She started yesterday,” Urgayle replied, “Half her crew want her to fail though.”

“She’s poison.”

He nodded in agreement, “I know.”

“Why are you letting her get away with this shit, Master Chief?” Lieutenant O’Neil bit out. “You sure as hell nailed into me...”

“You were a different case, Lieutenant.” He said cooly, “I wanted you out. I wanted you broken and crying for me to let you ring that bell. I did what I believed was the best for the service then, and I’m doing what I believe is best for the service now.”

She breathed out in annoyance, mostly because despite the fact that she outranked him, this was his duty assignment. He was the one charged by the admiral with training these candidates. “You think she’ll ever make a good Seal?”

“I think she’s got all the building blocks for it,” Urgayle said after a moment. “Someone just fucked up royally when they put her together.”

“Playing God now are we?”

“God wishes he were a Seal.” Urgayle replied dryly, as the Lieutenant snorted into her coffee.

With the end in sight, So Sorry Day starting in less than twenty hours, the Seal Candidates continued to work through the cold and the heat and the pain. The bell didn’t rung much, if at all, now, most of those who would voluntarily drop out were long gone now. Those who remained couldn’t really conceive of the word quit anymore.

They all had their reasons, and those reasons varied. For some, it was as simple as Xander’s. Another forty eight hours of pain for a lifetime of pride. More then a fair trade in their opinions. Fawkes was tenaciously hanging on to life, knowing that he needed the government’s help if he wanted to live past another two to three years. Sure they’d said they’d help anyway, but his dealings with the Official hadn’t led him to exactly trust authority. If he passed through here, he was theirs for four years. If they wanted their four years, they’d have to cure him.

For Dade Murphy, the question of quitting had come and gone and now no longer even entered his mind. His body was numb, his mind just working on automatic most of them time, but he wasn’t going to back down now.

Sara Bailey still thought about quitting, dreamed about it too, but her dreams always ended at her parent’s headstones with the laughing demon who’d killed them mocking her. She wasn’t letting that thing get away with that, and Xander Harris had convinced her that this was the best way to do that.

Samuel Winchester, for his part, was still in something of shock he thought. He figured that he’d come to a decision to quit in about a week or so, when it no longer mattered. Until then, he was numb and cold, but committed.

John O’Neill, or ‘Little Johnny’ as some of the guys had started calling him, never entertained the idea of quitting, as hard as it was. Well, not that he’d admit to. There were times he’d considered it, thinking about some of the hot girls he’d run into back in high school, but honestly he’d been bored to tears there. Something about serving in the SGC had basically ruined him for a normal life, he thought. Or, maybe, Loki had screwed up more than just his age when he cloned, cause he didn’t remember feeling the need for action like this since... well, since the last time he’d been seventeen.

Come to think of it, maybe that was his problem.

For Faith, going through the motions of Log PT for a time beyond her capability to count at the moment, the question of quitting did not exist. At first it had been a desire to convince herself that she was really doing better here than she could do in prison. A hope, maybe a foolish one, that Xander had been right.

Later, as the abuse began, she could only think of Xander’s twin edged comments. That she could do it, and that if she failed she was going back to a hole that would HOLD even a Slayer. He’d keep his word on that, she was certain.

Now, though, with the end of Hell Week in sight, Faith wouldn’t quit for one simple reason.

She wasn’t going to give Urgayle the satisfaction.

Everyone, by this point, had their reasons for hanging in. No every reason was the same, but they didn’t have to be. Each reason was powerful enough to pull the individual through, and that was enough.

“Sprints!” Urgayle called over the groans. “Out to the truck and back.”

The tired trainees scrambled up off the ground, breaking into runs as they bolted down the beach, tagged the side of the truck that sat about fifty meters away, and then bolted back. Urgayle noted that Lehane was still winning easily, but the order had changed after her.

Foley was starting to drop off, barely coming in fourth in this run. Harris was in third, and second was locked by Kevin Baker, the Army Ranger who’d somehow gotten caught in the wider net they’d cast. Give how much training and running he’d done to earn his rank their, it was no shock he was keeping up a good pace now.

Dade Murphy staggered in last, almost falling to his face as he made it back to the line with the rest. Urgayle had to admit that the kid had heart, and what he lacked elsewhere they could provide in time.

He wasn’t going to let Murphy know that, however.

“Is that the best you can do, Murphy?” He hissed, stepping in close as the kid gasped for air. “You think that’s good enough??”

Murphy looked up, slowly shaking his head.

“No Master Chief.”

“Then do it again!”

“Yes Master Chief!” Murphy gasped out, sprinting out toward the truck again.

Urgayle was startled by motion on his side, and turned to see Harris take off again, pacing Murphy. A few seconds later, Lehane was with him, and she stayed on the other side. O’Neil, Foley, and the rest were just a little bit afterwards.

<Well damn... These guys just might cut it after all. Just need to finish cleaning up Lehane’s poison, and we may just have a team.> Urgayle thought, watching as they made the truck as a group, turned and sprinted back. At the finish they all came in together and Urgayle just nodded, “That’ll do. Five minute rest.”

They collapsed, Dade mustering the strength to look up, “Thanks guys.”

“Hoo Yah.” The mumbled back, not able to muster much more energy than just that.

Faith screamed with exertion, putting up the end of Ol Misery on her own as Urgayle kept half the group pushed way up on the other side. She was so worn out that she could feel tears running down her cheeks, cleaning the much from her skin, and hated every second of it. She couldn’t stand the fact that she was fucking *crying* in front of Urgayle, but there was nothing she could do about it either.

“You missing your Cell, Convict!?” He screamed in her face, “I got good news for you, you just ring that bell and we’ll have one ready for you in just a jiff!”

She shook her head wildly, not able to speak.

“Come on, Convict! You know you want out, almost as much as I want you out! I tell you what, I’ll sweeten the pot... Ring the bell and I’ll see to it you get a nice comfortable cell, complete with Cable TV with all the premium channels! How about it? Sound good? A nice warm cell, nothing to do but what TV from bed...”

She just kept shaking her head.

“... no...”

“What was that!?”

“No.”

“No *what* Convict!?”

“No Master Chief!” She screamed out, locking her arms over her head with the weight of Ol Misery securely held up.

Urgayle leaned in, whispering but making sure his voice would carry as well, “I am going to break you, Convict.”

Her eyes were clear despite the tears, and she pinned him with a glare that could have scorched the hull of a battleship and shook her head slowly. “No Master Chief.”

“We’ll see.” Urgayle sneered, “We’ll see.”

Xander slumped into the first beside Faith, ripping open his MRE and yanking out the main dish. “You ok?”

“I’ll live, X.” She replied woodenly.

“Just remember your promise, F.” Xander said softly as he ripped open the foil pack and gobbled down the spaghetti dinner cold.

“I ain’t forgetting. I’ve just been busy.”

Xander nodded, “I know. We all know.”

She just nodded woodenly.

“Hang tough, ok. Just hang tough.” He said quietly, polishing off the spaghetti easily and moving on to the crackers and cheese.

He paused, then pulled the Hershey bar from his pack, “Here. You’ll get more out of this then me, or Buffy’s been lying to me for years to snake my snacks.”

Faith didn’t respond and after a moment Xander got up and moved over to check on Dade, who looked worse than she did. A moment passed, then another of the guys slid over beside her, looking out at the ocean and not at her.

“Don’t let him get to you.” The guy said, surprising Faith.

“Huh?” She looked over.

It was one of the army dudes, one of the guys X had torn into for calling her and Foley freaks.

“Don’t let the Master Chief get you down.” He repeated himself, “If he really wanted you to quit, you’d have been out of here weeks ago. I’ve seen it before, just don’t let him get to you.”

She snorted softly, shuddering, “Too late.”

“Hang in there. We’re almost through.” He said, reaching into his MRE and dropping a cracker pack in her lap. “Here... Seen you eat, you need this more than me right now.”

She started, looking over at him in surprise, but he just moved off a bit as Faith took a bite of her meal. John was next, just saying a few words and dropping off a piece of his meal in her lap. This time she had the presence of mind to object a bit, but he just waved her off.

“It’s not much, I never eat toilette paper anyway.”

She started, looking down, but it was a pack of M&Ms. She snickered slowly, shaking her head, and he just grinned.

“Mission accomplished. Just be strong. We’re almost through this.”

After that the rest of the crew did the same thing in turn, sometimes leaving a little piece of their meals as they’d all seen how much stronger she was after a good meal, sometimes just words of encouragement. Faith wondered if X had set it up or not, but in the end didn’t really care.

For the second time that day she was crying in front of everyone, and God did she hate it, but just the same, she didn’t hate it that much this time.

Behind the group, almost out of site, Master Chief Urgayle watched the entire thing with a look of calm satisfaction on his face.

It was about good goddamned time, in his considered opinion.

They weren’t a solid team yet, but unless he was sorely mistaken, they had taken a step in the right direction. Not perfect, but better.

And he had another eight months to make them perfect.

He’d settle for better. For now anyway.

Thursday waned, the chill of the night settling in on them until the dawn of Friday slowly lit the sky. They were given another hour’s sleep just before the sun came up, which every remaining Candidate gratefully accepted.

The hour came and went in a flash, and when that last second ticked away they were awakened by a sudden blare of automatic weapons fire as men burst into their tents screaming at them.

So Sorry Day was just beginning.

“Keep your heads DOWN you pieces of filth!” Master Chief Urgayle called out as he walked along the edge of the rope net that was strung up parallel to the ground only a foot above the mud and muck the Seal Candidates were crawling through. “I swear to god, I’ll personally blow the fucking helmet off the next one of you dumb pricks who sticks his head up!”

He punctuated that statement with a burst from the Colt M4 Carbine cradled in his right arm, the sudden blare of bullets making them duck their heads down into the mud and muck on instinct, though they knew he was only firing blanks.

So Sorry Day was the final day of Hell Week, and like the last day of hazing in any fraternity, it was loaded with the highest stress situations the instructors could manage. Unlike most fraternities, however, each of the men pouring on the stress were trained to ride the line of safety without pushing past it.

Even so, in the past twenty four hours they’d lose more men to injury than to DOR, as fatigue and body stress caused men to become careless and make mistakes they had to pay for.

Out in the mud, Faith Lehane was scrambling awkwardly as she tried to keep her head down and forward motion going strong, but she had long since found that this wasn’t her strength. She could dance through most of the obstacles on the Oh Course, making a mockery of the Seal training times, but when it came to getting down in the mud and working for it her times were nothing to brag about.

She barely made the minimum to be considered when they started, and even now she wasn’t all that much about the minimum acceptable times through the net and rope courses. She just worked better with both legs under her than she did flat on her belly, or back for that matter.

<Dad would have a coronary.> The Slayer thought with grim irony, <He always told me that I was only going to be any good when I was on my beck.>

Her thoughts were cut off when she ran headlong into a pair of feet that were, for once, moving slower than she was.

“Hey!” She growled, just peeking up from under her helmet, “What the hell!?”

“S... sorry...” The guy ahead, Dade she remembered, mumbled. “I’m caught up...”

“Hang on...” Faith muttered, crawling half around him, and half over him, until she found where he’d been hooked and flipped the rope loose. “Go for it.”

“Thanks.” He muttered, moving forward again.

She paused for a moment, then shook her head and took off after him.

Across the course Xander and John were neck and neck as they raced for the wall, both grinning as if they couldn’t imagine anywhere better to be. They vaulted from the ground as artillery simulators went off, showering them with dirt and mud, and hooked the top of the wall as they struggled to drag themselves up.

As the morning began to progress both men, and several others in the class as well, began to pour more and more energy into the evolutions as the end came into sight. None of them were really sure where the energy came from, or cared. As far as they were concerned, it was almost over, and that thought alone drove them on to more and more effort.

They both flipped their legs over the wall, landed together on the other side, and glanced at each other only briefly before they grinned and raced for the next section of the course.

Dale Hawkins grinned as he watched them run, competing with each other even as they helped one another through tricky sections, all the while not saying a word. “Born to be a team.”

James Curran was hard put to disagree. O’Neill, whose record was frankly scary, and Harris, whose wasn’t much better, had taken to one another in an almost frighteningly easy way once they’d got through figuring out who was in charge.

It was odd, but in the end O’Neill seemed to stand down and let Harris call the shots despite a few early on challenges. Given that John had the experience of a fifty year old Special Forces Operative, it was even stranger. In the end though, Curran felt that O’Neill had realized that his apparent age had basically screwed up his ability to command sufficient respect from the men around him.

Harris, on the other hand, had been one of the rare pillars of strength Seal instructors prayed to find in their classes. Whenever one of his crew needed help, hew as somehow there to give it. Sometimes it was a word, a hand, even just a glance, but he was there. They’d watched through the weeks preceding Hell Week, and through the past week especially, and they’d liked what they’d seen.

He sacrificed his own times, occasionally earning punishment from the instructors, in order to keep Murphy in the running. Jordan had been the first to note that when the two ran together, Harris’ lost some time, but Muphy gained a lot. When Fawkes showed nervousness about continuing the drownproofing, almost ringing out, it had been Harris who got him back in the pool with a few words.

Lehane’s poison still infected the crew, but since Harris had taken over as the crew leader it had faded a lot. Her attitude still sucked in pretty much every instructors opinion, but it was starting to open up into something they could work with.

Curran doubted that she’d ever be able to work within the Teams as a normal part of a platoon, but she just might be able to function within one team. It wouldn’t be acceptable for any normal candidate, but Lehane’s abilities had given her a certain unfair advantage over most applicants. She was getting a lot of slack cut for her, through he doubted she saw it that way. Unless he missed his guess, she actively hated Master Chief Urgayle for the man’s abuse, but Curran knew that she didn’t realize how much the other men had hated and envied her the very abilities that made her special to the teams. If she’d been treated even remotely on the same level, they would have grown to despise her before Hell Week was half over.

When you’re tired and hurting and freezing your ass off, the last thing you want to see is someone right beside you going through all the same shit you’re taking and brushing it off as nothing at all. Urgayle made her suffer, Curran knew, but the men had seen it too. And everyone loves the underdog.

She wasn’t in the clear by a long shot, Curran knew. Phase two was coming up, and that’s when her abilities would truly make her stand out. The briefing he’d received from Harris indicated that her unarmed and close quarters combat skill was liable to be second to none. That would make her show up as unique in a group of men who were used to being damned near the best.

Basic conditioning showed her to be strong, untiring, and fast on runs. But so was Jake Foley, and a lot of the guys were able to do the work even though she did it easier. If she really jumped out ahead in Phase 2, a lot of the currently damped jealousies were going to be back in spades.

He sighed as he watched Winchester and Fawkes make their way across the demo pit, more mud on them than clothing.

Lehane really was poison, he decided. Her attitude, her abilities, the way she looked and the way she talked. Everything about the girl was pure poison in a group like the teams.

Which made the fact that she was pretty much impossible to resist all the more maddening.

Curran both envied and pitied the team that finally ended up with her, if she made it through. Though he really pitied himself, because it was likely to be his responsibility to build a team she could work within.

How low had they sunk, he wondered, that they were willing to throw out some of the fundamental concepts of the Teams in order to accommodate someone like Faith Lehane?

He consoled himself by noting that they were, in fact, building a new type of team. And, traditionally, you got all kinds of screwballs when you did that. Eventually you worked out what to do with them, or you rode them out on rails. So far, he wasn’t taking bets on which would happen with Lehane.

She had to survive BUD/s first, and while Hell Week was over, things were only going to get more and more intense from here.

So Sorry Day ended in the evening, and Admiral Chegwidden himself appeared as the wet, muddy, and thoroughly worn out class was marched into the lot in their BDUs and helmets. They had more mud caked into the clothing than cloth, and each probably weighed a good twenty pounds more than normal just from the muck, but they were all standing straight.

A whistle blared and Urgayle snarled out, “Attention on Deck!”

The reactions to that call were a bit mixed. Some of them were too tired to snap to quite right, some weren’t yet in the habit because of their peculiar backgrounds, but they all tried and most did a passing fair job of it as Chegwidden walked across them, not looking at any of them.

“Admiral.” Commander Curran said, saluting.

“As you were,” Chegwidden returned the salute, and the Commander relaxed marginally. “So, Commander... how are your candidates?”

“Rough.” Curran replied cooly, his voice loud enough to travel. “But they’ll do for now.”

“Excellent.” Chegwidden replied with a hint of a smile, “And has the week passed satisfactorily?”

“Marginally, Sir.”

“Well... that’ll have to do, I suppose.”

“Aye Sir.” Curran replied with a wry smile. “With your permission?”

“By all means, Commander.”

“Master Chief!”

“Aye Commander!” Urgayle snapped straight, looking straight ahead.

“I suppose we’ll make do with this bunch for a while longer.”

“Aye Commander.” Urgayle said, his tone suggesting he didn’t agree but wasn’t going to argue with an Admiral and a full Commander. “In that case, Sir...”

He blew on the whistle again, barking out an order. “Strip down!”

The assembled class was dropping their clothing before they knew it, even as cold water hoses were turned on them again, spraying the mud off them each in turn. In a moment there was a pile of filthy clothing on the lot, and a bunch of shivering and naked sailors huddling together as they tried to avoid the spray as much as humanly possible.

The Admiral averted his gaze from the two nude and obviously cold women, nodding to the instructors.

The hoses cut off and men rushed in with preheated blankets they draped around the class’s shoulders, as Urgayle stepped forward and put his foot on a cardboard box that had appeared sometime during the impromptu showering.

“Congratulations. You survived hell week,” He said simply, then reached down and ripped open the box, pulling out brown shirts. “You’re now officially brownshirts... I think the ladies in the group will be happy to know that this color isn’t nearly as revealing when you get it wet.”

A few snorts and chuckles sounded, but most of them were too tired to laugh or be offended by the comment and they merely accepted the shirts and continued to huddle into their blankets.

“You will remain on base for an additional 24 hours during which time you will each receive three complete medical examinations. The first will be in a few minutes, then you get twelve hours to rack out before the next one. After that, another examination, then more rack time if you need it, and the final exam will be this time tomorrow.” Urgayle told them as they shivered in front of him. “Starting immediately after that, you will have one week to recover and prepare. We’re not done with Basic Conditioning yet.”

They all nodded.

“Understand me!?”

“Hooyah Master Chief!” They yelled together, the response ingrained by now.

“Dismissed!” He called, “Follow your instructors to the medical area... and Good Work.”

Some of them glanced back in surprise at that last comment, but most just shivered continuously as they followed the instructors who led them toward the medical building.

A week’s worth of sleep felt just about right to most of them at that point.

Admiral Chegwidden watched them go, mixed emotions on his mind and face.

“They look like any other team, don’t they Sir?” Curran asked quietly.

“Looks are deceiving, Commander.”

“That they are Sir,” Curran replied, “Can’t wait to get them into Phase 2... see what they can really do and show them how much more they really have to learn.”

“How are the new training courses coming, Commander?”

Curran smirked, “Just beautiful, Sir. We’ve added everything Harris came up with, and a few things he never imagined. The new ammo alone is a thing of terrifying beauty, Sir.”

Chegwidden rolled his eyes, “Just don’t let the press catch you shooting anything with them, Commander. We’d be hung in effigy at every college campus in the country.”

******

“This... this is just not acceptable!”

Diane Hughes threw up her hands, glaring at the Corpsman who had helped her do the medical evaluations on Jake.

He backed off from the mousy doctor, surprised by her reaction, and threw up his on hands defensively, “Don’t shoot the messenger, Doc...”

“Do you know what this indicates!?” She demanded, completely blowing away her meek persona as she went on a tear through the lab. “That... That... Barbaric atrocity last week severely depleted Jake’s Nanites and their energy supply! If you had let me examine him during that display of machismo I could have helped keep him at peak!”

“I believe that was the point,” A dry voice sounded as a blond stepped into the lab, distracting Diane enough that the Corpsman bolted. “Be happy, your boy merely got tired. Mine almost drowned.”

“And you are...?” Diane asked, confused.

“Keepsly,” The blond replied, extending her hand, “Claire Keepsly. I’m here with Darien.”

“Fawkes!” Diane blurted, “The invisible man! Oh, my, I read some of the research reports on that project... I had thought that it was destroyed during that terrorist attack...”

“Mostly,” Claire said, idly looking at the data that so disturbed her peer. “Darien was the project, however, and he survived. He’s proven quite adept at that, it seems.”

Diane shook her head, “They’ve really dug into all the old projects, haven’t they?”

“Not all,” Claire shrugged, “I’m surprised that we haven’t seen some of the take from Area Fifty One yet.”

Diane stared.

“Oh... weren’t you cleared for that?” Claire asked, glancing around. “I felt sure that with your work on the Nanite program...”

“There’s an area 51!?”

“I suppose not,” Claire sighed, “Yes, but don’t spread it around. It’s mostly just a large warehouse anyway... The government throws anything they don’t dare destroy but can’t just leave lying around in there. A lot of archeological items find their way there from what I’m given to understand... Rumor has it they even have the Ark of the Covenant stored in there somewhere.”

Diane stared, unblinking, and Claire just shook her head.

“I’m really not used to working with other people, I’m afraid.” She sighed, “Not peers at any rate. Normally I’m trying to keep Darien from copping a feel, you understand.”

“Erm... no?” Diane squeaked.

Claire glanced at her, then at the image of Jake on the computer behind her, “You don’t? Is he gay?”

“Medical data tossed up some odd flags,” James Curran said as he read one of the files, glancing up at the Admiral. “Lehane’s fitness report is interesting to say the least.”

“Indeed.” The Admiral murmured, not looking up, “Her allergy tests alone raised some eyebrows.”

“Yeah, well, the Docs aren’t used to pollen being allergic to *people* afterall,” Curran said dryly, “Foley’s got some interesting readings too... Hell Week did a number on his systems. His strength degraded by eighteen percent more than the normal average, though he still remained above the normal average. Doc Hughes is ready to chew nails over the reduction of active nanites in his system... might want to avoid her for a while.”

Chegwidden smiled thinly, “I’ll bear that in mind. I am a little concerned about Harris, though... This didn’t show up on his pre-qual meds.”

“No... this is true,” Curran replied, sighing heavily. “Some genetic degradation... possibly the onset of an inherited illness. No current matches to the more common ailments, however. We’ve got some people looking for a match on some more obscure databases, but nothing yet.”

Chegwidden nodded heavily, “How does it affect his operational status?”

“We don’t know yet.” Curran admitted, “We’d be tempted to pull him, except that right now he’s the only thing holding his crew together. I think we should wait until we have something solid.”

“Agreed.” Chegwidden nodded, “Everyone else come through clean?”

“We have a couple odd hits on Winchester’s EKG apparently,” Curran shrugged, “I can’t make heads or tails out of it... but compared to Lehane and Bailey he’s so normal it’s staggering. That’s it, though, the rest are all clean.”

“Good,” The Admiral said, tossing down Harris’ file on top of the stack, “Keep an eye on Mr Harris, however. First hint that he’s losing capacity, pull him and get him into the infirmary.”

“Aye Sir.”

A week off was just enough for most of them to stop aching when they walked, but it was a welcome shift in pace just the same. Many of the remaining candidates made a beeline for their girlfriends if they had them, but most just stayed in the Condos by the beach the Navy had moved them into at the end of Hell Week.

Xander considered going to Sunnydale for a visit, it was only a few hours away really, but after a quick bout of phone tag he found out that Willow and Oz were out of town, in LA with the band. Buffy had taken advantage of the deal Xander had squeezed the Admiral for and was in Delaware with Riley, who was being debriefed. A platoon from Team Five was using Sunnydale as a chance to hone their supernatural combat skills, backed up by Giles and H2's infrastructure.

So, really, there was no reason to go back. He’d thought about spending some time with Tara, but honestly he and she had never seemed to move past the ‘dinner and a movie’ stage and he had the impression she wasn’t really interested in doing so.

So he’d spent the week mostly hanging around the beach with the other candidates in the area, and occasionally patrolling with Faith or some of the Team Five guys. Nothing too heavy in Sandiego, but the vampires had a presence that kept them in practice at least.

The week passed quickly and ended though, throwing them right back into the rigor of Basic Conditioning. Over the next three weeks they continued to work progressively harder, their evolutions continuously growing more complicated and difficult than anything they’d done before.

Faith improved, in his opinion, but her interactions with the others was still rough. Some of the guys only tolerated her because they were told to, Xander knew, and that bothered him.

Faith wasn’t the easiest person to tolerate, he knew that, he really did. She’d tried to kill him, after all, and he still had a lot of issues himself with the raven haired Slayer. That said, she was putting forth a damned good effort, and he couldn’t just let her do all that for nothing. They lost a couple guys off their crew the week after they came back, one injury and one guy shifted out because he couldn’t adapt.

That left him with Faith, Sarah, Johnny, Dade, Darien, Sammy, Trevor, Jake and Franklin hanging tough. And he also realized that they really were his sometime in the next to last week of phase one when he found out that Lieutenant Guthrie broke his leg on the Oh Course, which left them without a class leader.

“Excuse me... sir??” Xander swallowed, goggling at Master Chief Urgayle glared at him.

“You hard of hearing, Harris!?”

“No Master Chief!” Xander bolted out automatically.

“Then you heard me?”

“Yes Master Chief!”

“So what’s your problem?”

“Master Chief, I don’t even have a rank! I can’t be class leader!”

“Can’t??” Urgayle growled dangerously.

“I... Well... Other’s have rank...”

“Consider this just another evolution, Harris. Fuck it up, and I’ll land on your head like a ton of bricks, Boy.”

“Aye Aye, Master Chief!” Xander snapped out, trying to hide the panic in his eyes.

Being put in charge of the class forced him to step back, giving his own crew less of his time and turning an eye to the rest of the class. It wasn’t easy, and at first he found himself pulling in more punishment details than he’d had all the rest of the weeks put together. Just keeping an eye on everyone quickly wore him out faster than Hellweek had, and within a couple days he was nearly a wreck.

He was doing a series of punishment sprints assigned because he’d screwed up an evolution when Commander Curran interrupted him half way through.

“Walk with me, Xan,” The Commander said quietly.

Xander hesitantly straightened and joined the Commander, looking around for Urgayle.

“Relax,” Curran smiled, “I outrank the Master Chief.”

Xander nodded, breathing hard.

“You’ve been racking up the punishment details this week,” Curran observed.

Xander nodded, “I know, Sir... I’ll don’t know if I’m cut out for this leadership stuff.”

“I don’t think that’s your problem,” Curran smiled tightly, “You’re in charge of the Class now, Xander... You can’t treat all forty eight guys like they were part of your boat crew. Lead them, don’t push them.”

“Sir?”

“Xan, this is stuff you would have learned if you’d had time to go for a commission before this project got started.”

Xander ducked his head, “I know I don’t have the experience most of these guys have, Commander... I...”

“Come on, Xan... You want to wash out? Hell you made it through Hell Week!” Curran growled, “You going to let this shit put you down?”

Xander grimaced, but didn’t respond fast enough.

“Xander, you’re not a quitter and we like you. So suck it up and sailor,” Curran growled, “Lead your class... stop trying to push them ahead of you.”

Xander nodded slowly, “Aye Sir.”

Curran looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Go on, finish your sprints.”

Xander nodded, saluting quickly and jogged back to where he had been doing the punishment sets.

“You think he’ll get it?”

Curran glanced back to see Hawkins approach, and just shrugged. “Don’t know. Hard for a guy like him... he’s the center of the group, the balance point. Being a leader is different, he might not be cut out for it.”

“Ten bucks says he buckles down and does the job,” Hawkins smirked.

“No bet.” Curran replied dryly, “You haven’t paid off yet for Lehane.”

Hawkins grimaced, “Hey, I say that history will vindicate me on that one... She’s gonna deck Urgayle yet!”

“Hell week’s over, Hawk,” Curran grinned, “You lost the bet.”

“What are you? A rules lawyer?”

“I’m not taking any more bets until you settle up.”

“Bastard.”

“Move your ass, Jennings!” Xander growled, slapping the last man through the course on the back as he turned and followed the man over the final obstacle.

Another two weeks had passed, and he was starting to get used to the whole leader thing, at least as long as nobody asked him too many questions. Mostly he just had to keep up his own times and show the guys, and girls, that the guy in ‘charge’ wasn’t slacking off. Once he got that through his head, things got easier.

Occasionally he had to give orders, but usually Xander found that just correcting a mistake with a suggestion worked better. With a couple of exceptions, every man in the class wasn’t only a volunteer but was also wildly enthusiastic about being there, so they tended to accept suggestions quickly and react well when someone tried to help them excel.

For himself, his times had fallen off a bit, just trying to keep an eye on everyone had seen to that, but in the end he managed to bring them back up again until he was generally coming in within the top ten of the class in most of their common challenges.

With Faith and Foley locking the top two slots, John O’Neil coming on like gangbusters, and some of the toughest military guys around competing against him, Xander was willing to take a top ten slot.

With Hellweek past them, they started to vary their evolutions some, occasionally even getting out of Coronado. They’d all been flown up to the mountains for a week, where they ran and worked out, and were occasionally dunked in freezing mountain streams if the instructors thought for a moment they were getting too comfortable with it all.

For himself, the work was hard, but Xander could feel himself changing. He had always been in decent shape, especially since Buffy came to Sunnydale, running to and from fights tended to see to that. Now, though, he was turning physically hard. His muscles were showing themselves, rather than hiding under a layer of junk food powered fat. He’d never felt better than when he was on the final leg of a ten mile open ocean swim.

He could see the same thing in the others, too.

Faith never looked better, even taking into account the lack of hair. Her body seemed to absorb everything the training threw at it, and just begged for more. Sarah Bailey had hardened like Xander, not quite to the point of being overmuscled, but after weeks of determined training the Witch looked seriously hard in a way that Faith couldn’t match. It looked good on her, though, Xander had decided, and unlike Faith, Sarah made the haircut look right.

Of the guys, most had come in looking like world class athletes. Few men who didn’t would even consider trying to survive BUD/s, and that was a fact. They didn’t all look like the same athlete, of course. Some had the look of fighters, boxers perhaps, others looked like running, a lot looked like swimmers. All physical body types were present, from the slim swimmers svelte form to the stocky boxer, but they were all althletes to start with.

After eight weeks of Basic Conditioning, to say nothing of three weeks of Indoc, they all looked like the best they could be. The swimmers had put on some muscle, the boxers had taken off some bulge, and in general they all looked like they could easily step into the other’s areas of expertise without flinching.

It was a great feeling for Xander, and it got better every day when he watched himself and his classmates continue to push through the limits they’d always imposed on themselves.

“How’s Harris’ medical data looking?”

The doctor started, trying to both jump and salute as the Admiral appeared behind him, but Chegwidden just waved him back down so he tried to relax.

“Still having trouble locking down the source of the genetic anomaly.” He replied, shaking his head, “There’s been some tinkering with his genome, however.”

Chegwidden blinked, “Pardon?”

“This isn’t an inherited illness, it’s artificial.” The doctor explained.

The Admiral frowned, leaning down, “Explain.”

“Well, look here... This is not human DNA,” The doctor highlighted a series of letters that made no sense to the Admiral. “I’m really not sure what it is...”

“Mako shark.”

“What?” Both the doctor and Admiral jumped, looking back to see Claire Keepsley looking over their shoulders.

“It’s Mako Shark.” She repeated, “And that’s a little bit of great white, and unless I’m seriously mistaken there’s even a touch of Meg in there. This is from a human sample??”

“Doctor,” Chegwidden glared, “You should not be sneaking around the base like that...”

Claire eyed him, “My office is down the hall. Now, this is from a human sample?”

Chegwidden sighed, but nodded, “Yes. One of our Candidates.”

“He Russian?” She asked.

“No.”

“Huh. That’s odd.”

Chegwidden counted to five, unclenching his fist, “What is?”

“Well, this looks like a Russian super soldier program that crossed my desk in the mid eighties, when I was working for the CIA.” She replied, “Their response to increased incursions by the Seal Teams into their territories, actually. There’s some stuff in here that doesn’t match, however... strange...”

The Admiral waited, seconds blending into minutes, but she just continued to read the information without speaking. Finally he sighed, “Doctor...”

“What? Oh... Yes, well there’s been some degradation of the original material, I think.... Looks like radiation damage perhaps. I don’t think it took the way the original project did...” Claire said, “Good thing for your man, I might add... The original project was ninety eight percent fatal according to CIA reports.”

Chegwidden flinched. He had grown to almost like Mr Harris, and the young man deserved better. “How bad is it?”

Claire took the printouts from the protesting doctor, frowning as she flipped through them. “Odd. This would indicate that the effects have been in remission and just started to awake recently. Do you have a timeline for the subject? And a Baseline, if possible...”

“Now see here...!”

“Doctor, get her what she needs.” Chegwidden growled. “Now.”

“Ah... Yes Sir.”

A few minutes later, Claire was pouring over all of Xander Harris’ medical records since he’d enlisted.

“Oh, this is very interesting... This is one of your Candidates, you said?” She asked, looking up, “In Darien’s class?”

“That is correct.”

“I need a schedule of all his activities over the training... I wish you’d had more complete medical tests done early on...” She muttered, “Still... We might be able to work with this.”

“Get her what she needs,” Chegwidden said under his breath to the Doctor, “My authorization. Doctor Keepsley?”

“Hmmm Yes?” She asked, looking up.

“Whatever you need.” He said, “Find out what’s happening to my man.”

“Of course.” She said, blinking as if surprised he needed to tell her that.

Chegwidden just nodded, then left.

Urgayle watched as the brownshirts jogged easily into the main lot, coming to rest as they sorted themselves by squads. Across the lot, they could see a group of men in white shirts surrounded by the majority of the instructors. He ignored their curious glances in that direction, eyeing them all carefully.

Especially Harris.

Word had finally filtered down as to why they were supposed to be watching the kid so closely, and Urgayle had to admit that the only thing that surprised him was that he wasn’t more surprised. Some of the ‘unconventional’ recruits, of which Harris was one, had led weird lives so something like this wasn’t so completely off the wall.

The Admiral wanted to make sure they had all the facts before approaching Harris about it, which the Master Chief agreed with when he found out that they were worried that the condition might be terminal. No point in worrying the kid until they knew, especially since there was nothing he could do about it.

He looked good though, none of the symptoms he’d been warned about were showing. No shakes, no loss of hair (well, ok that one was a bit hard to catch in a Seal class), no strange skin conditions showing up, and so on and so forth. The kid looked damned good, and he was in excellent shape too.

He wasn’t superman, if that’s what the Ruskies were aiming for. He wasn’t even the best in the class, discounting Lehane and Foley. There were a half dozen guys in better physical shape, and even a couple who could swim better than him, so Urgayle didn’t know what the big fuss was about. Kid looked good, wasn’t freaking out on them, and sure as hell wasn’t showing any signs of dying.

The Master Chief figured he’d let the brass worry about it.

In the meantime, he had a class to address.

“Class 318!” He called out, “Congratulations, you’ve passed Basic Conditioning.”

They grinned, quietly congratulating each other and he let them for a moment.

“Don’t get too smug, you’ve got a long way to go yet.” Urgayle smirked, “The Island is coming up, and I think you’ll find that things are only going to get more intense from here.”

That quieted them down a little, and Urgayle took a little smug satisfaction in that as he walked passed them, eyeing them carefully in turn. They’d painted their helmets red, signifying their successful completion of phase one, and were all looking good and alert after a ten mile run. They didn’t even look winded, which was as it should be.

“Behind me, I’m sure you can see the next class beginning Indoc,” He told them, “For those of you who know a little about the Seals, you’ll know that we’ve accelerated the class schedules. Take that for whatever you like, but understand that you’re not trying to get into the boy scouts here. Some of you will die before you even get to put the Budweiser on your uniform. If you’re not ready for that, the bell is right there behind me.”

He paused, watching their eyes shift over to the where the bell hung at the head of the beach.

When none of them moved, not that he’d expected them to, he went on, “Phase Two is Tactical Warfare training... Things are a little different this time around, some of the courses have been updated, and you’ll be learning techniques not normally taught to the Teams.”

“Some of you know why, some of you don’t,” Urgayle continued, “We didn’t bother to tell some people when they signed up because, frankly, we knew that most of you wouldn’t make it through Hell Week. Full disclosure will be made on The Island... anyone who wants to back out then will have a chance.”

They shifted nervously, some of them eyeing each other uncertainly.

“For the moment, You all get another week off,” Urgayle sneered, “Back here next Monday, Oh Eight Hundred! Dismissed!”

They broke apart, heading toward their condos as the next class were badgered out onto the beach to start Indoc.

“Another week,” Faith shrugged, “What the hell? I just want to get this training shit over with...”

Xander chuckled, “I’m heading up to Sunnydale for a few days... You interested?”

Faith froze, eyes wavering. “I...”

“You’ve got to face them sometime,” he told her, “Just remember... They’re Crew to me. I’ve fought and bled with the scoobs... but, you’re Crew too, F.”

She looked over at him, then nodded slowly. “Alright.”

“Cool. John’s coming too,” Xander grinned, “I guess he’s got nothing better to do... and I really need someone to take shotgun in my car. He can drive his own damned car.”

Faith snickered, “John-boy remind you of someone, X?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he’s actually related to Gilligan.”

To Book One - Part Three

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