She looks around wildly for something weapon-shaped, fails to find anything suitable, and settles for hitting him with the entire snack table. This works OK, though it's too slow to be much good against a vampire who knows what they're doing and also results in the snack table being out of reach.

Also I found Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. He's dead. And possibly unconscious. In that order.

Hang on, get out of there if you can, backup coming -

They have the exits blocked - maybe I can - 

Weapon, weapon, weapon -

Spike applauds. 

"You know, that was something. Woman of action, I respect that. Tell you what - "

Oh, who needs weapons anyway. 

She runs for the exit and yeah, no, that's not gonna work, she's gonna have to ram her way out. She kicks someone in the face and then throws the other nearby vampire at the wall, but there are ten of them, and by the time she's done with that there are three more on her and her arms are pinned. Not pinned well, but it means she can't punch anyone in the next three seconds.

Also Wyndam-Pryce is not unconscious, frick, he's standing up across the room.

"You know I was hoping we could talk for a bit before I killed you. I mean we've only just met."

So the getting out of here plan did not work so well.

Then just - stall - they're on the way - 

"Name's Spike. Now I could kill you now, Slayer, but it'd be a little hollow. We'd never know which of us wins in a proper fight. So I figure, I call off my men - have them guard the exists, so your discretion doesn't get the better of your valor - and we'll try this again, just you and me. You win, they let you walk out of here. You lose, well. Don't be scared, pet, I'll make it quick. Won't hurt a bit."

"All right. Call off your men and let's dance."

He nods. The vampires on her let her go and return to guarding the exits.

And so they fight. She hits him pretty hard, but he doesn't go down. He hits back.

There is some part of whatever she is now that was made for this, specifically, not for a world of crossbows or cars or guns. Some power that was first unleashed when humanity was in its infancy and its most formidable weapon was a stick, with a sharpened stone attached, in the hand of a young woman who was supposed to be human, but who maybe wasn't anymore, not quite.

It sings, fighting someone who's worthy of being fought. 

Soldiers burst into the gym with tasers to find not all that much to mop up. Some of them start administering first aid. Most of them keep going.

- and she can't actually figure out how to deliver enough blunt force trauma to force Spike down, and at some point Spike gets one really good hit in her solar plexus and shit shit shit, everything is terrible - 

Things going OK on your end? 'Cause I'm fine, I'm definitely not getting my ass handed to me by a vampire I met three minutes ago.

They burst through the door and fire a lot of tasers at everyone that might plausibly be a vampire.

Apparently they know that Karen is not a vampire. This is pretty cool.

OK. Crisis averted. Ow. Is Azalea - ?

Fine. Fuck. Where'd they get - this is so many - 

I don't know, we had the town practically all cleared out!

Sounds like someone should talk to this - he kicks the blond vampire that'd challenged Karen - when he wakes up.

Yeah.

He beat me. Not even, like, all of them together. Just him.

I don't see how they got into the building. Incompetent idiots. He glares at the soldiers.

I dunno. 

I didn't think we could miss this many in the city in the first place. They have to be new, right, they can't have been feeding, we'd have noticed that, surely - ?

Could've been feeding on animals, I don't keep very close track of that. But yeah. I asked about other disappearances when I was looking for Wesley.

Can we go back to Michael's? I dunno what Snyder's doing about this but I don't really want to deal with it right now so much.

Yep. He takes her arm.