First, let me congratulate you on another great chapter. Second, I wish you a speedy and full recovery from your injuries. Keep up the magnificent work.

Thank you kindly. :)

Thanks for the best wishes, but actually I've already recovered, thanks; I've been out of hospital for a couple of months or so by now.

Chapter 18 is already in the works, and I hope to have it ready to go fairly soon-ish. :)

Best wishes, and ride free!

- El ;)

Hey, welcome back dude. I've joined tth recently and this fic is amongst my favs. hope you're better & keep writing, you're good at it.

Thank you kindly, and welcome to tth! :) Yep, I'm back to normal (or as close as I ever get... ;D) and I certainly intend to; aside from anything else, it's great fun.

Best wishes, and ride free!

- El ;)

Oh boy you have an interesting storyline going on here and when Dru a few chapters ago quoted Battlestar Galactica the Reimagined Series, "All of this has happened before and will happen again..." I think we're in for another group of people to come out from the shadows sometime. I guess the Brits don't care that H-Troop operating out of Sunnyhell could be construed by the US and the US Armed Forces as an act of war or even just an illegal operation. I hope that as things go the SGC comes in and deals with some of the troubles in Sunnyhell. I think the SAS H-Troop could use a shorter Logistics chain and the SGC could provide that as long as the deal included an SG-Team assigned to Sunnyhell.

Thank you kindly; I try to keep things interesting and avoid being too predictible. ;)

Erm... actually, more than one group will be emerging from the shadows... in a variety of ways.

Meh... when you're writing fiction that involves the supernatural, aliens, and time-travelling killer robots, you really have to just let piddly little trivial matters like international law just go hang. ;D
I mean, come on, look at all the times in their respective canons that the Scooby Gang, SG-1, and Team Gibbs went against 'the rules', often not merely breaking said rules but smashing enormous holes through them big enough to steer a battleship through? The Scoobies blew up a school, SG-1 went AWOL (in the Season 1 finale) and often violate the Posse Comitatus Act, Team Gibbs get up to all sorts of things that are technically illegal...
So, yeah; personally, I prefer to stick to 'the rule of cool' when writing fiction. If your characters rigidly obey the rules all the time, it just gets bor-ing! ;)

As for the future... well, we'll have to wait and see. ;)

Thanks for the review, and best wishes,

- El ;)

So sorry to hear about the rl issues, all the best. I was excited to see this story was still alive. Excellent work, looking forward to more.

Thank you kindly, and I'm glad you're enjoying the series! :)

Best wishes, and ride free!

- El ;)

A classy take on what the Watchers can actually be about. Well done.

Thank you kindly! :) I'm really glad you liked my approach.

Best wishes, and ride free!

- El ;)

Fake FBI agents, NCIS, NID and a Terminator....who what a combo....

Oh, yes, there's a LOT of fun you can have writing about a wide and varied assortment of characters like that. :)

ohaaa..poor Ethan...even if he was a scumbag I always kind of liked him.

To be honest, so did I. But I'm afraid it just seemed to work out that way... still, he survives most of my other fanfic plot lines (in my fanfic 'A Collection of Ideas and Curiosities') so I don't feel too bad for him. ;)

Thanks for reviewing, and best wishes,

El ;)

Please, Please, please tell me your not done with this fic. This has been among one of the best written xovers I've read in a while, and it would really suck if it got abandoned at this point.

Anyways, gr8 fic, again PLEASE KEEP WRITING

Believe me, I'm not even REMOTELY done with this fic; well, okay, technically speaking I suppose I am, but only because of length restrictions on TTH, and the SERIES will continue for a long while yet. I have a LOT of plans for various plot arcs in the future.

I'm really sorry it took me so long to update, but I'm back now, and (hopefully) here to stay. :)

Many thanks for reviewing, and best wishes,

El ;)

really liking the way you killed off the mayor. I keep rolling my eyes at the initiative idiots. changing harmony into a nice person was rather interesting. hope you update soon:)

Thank you! :) I was rather concerned when I was writing C16 whether or not I was doing the right thing killing him off like that, but I was determined to avoid a straightforward reproduction of Season 3, and it seemed like a good idea at the time...

Yeah, well, they do make for a great dark-comedy sort of comic relief. ;)

I'm glad you liked it! I try my best to come up with new approaches, and it seemed like it could have possibilities...

Well, I'm afraid it's taken me far longer than I would've liked, but here's Chapter 17 at long bl**dy last! :D And I promise I won't take as long with the next update...

Many thanks for reviewing, and best wishes,

El ;)

Wait - Star Trek symbols work on vamps ? I guess that would explain how Andrew and Jonathon managed to survive so long on the Hellmouth.

Well, I figured that there had to be some sort of reason why they managed to survive so long if they were born and raised there - and Xander and Jesse, as well. (Okay, Jesse didn't last as long, but still...)

Merry Christmas, and to all a good life.

A (very, very belated) Merry Christmas to you as well; live long and prosper, best wishes and ride free!

El :)

Great chapter. Keep up the good work.

Thank you kindly, and I'll do my best. :)

Best wishes,

El ;)

I suppose it was pre box of gavrock.
Great chapter!

Yup: the Box gives you invulnerability for a hundred days, and given that Wilkins' Ascension apparently happened sometime in late May or early June in canon, I calculated that he couldn't have used the Box until the February of the same year at the earliest. So... Boom. Headshot. ;)

Thank you kindly, and best wishes,

El ;)

I love this story.

That was one of my favorite kills scenes of The Mayor ever. As always I love your work. Thank you for letting us read it, and I can't wait to read more of it.

Sincerely

John

Thank you kindly, John, and I'm really glad you're enjoying the series. :)

Really? Wow... thank you very much! I was a bit indecisive over whether to kill Wilkins off so early in the series (although it was originally meant to happen in Chapter 14) but eventually decided to just go for it, so that's a big relief. I know they did a spectacular job of killing the Mayor in canon, and there's some fanfics out there that have done a good job (at least, I think so) of producing 'tweaked' versions of that battle, but... well, it's been done several times over, so I wanted to take a different approach to dealing with him.

The next chapter's in the works: I'm afraid that it'll take a while to complete, but considering the fight scenes that I'm currently choreographing, I hope you'll find the wait to be worth it in the end.

Best wishes, and ride free!

El ;)

I take it in this story that Riley Finn is going to be one of those Irish descendents who bear a festering grudge all the way back to Saint Patrick himself. Not just because that specific cleric was originally from England, but also because he neglected to use his miraculous powers to tow the entire island a few thousand miles away from those buggers to the east.

-Edit-

It looks like we both had a "Huh?" moment here. My above comment was just a guess on exactly why a supposedly professional soldier would say and believe the following from your story:

*Finn snorted. “The SAS, Director, are an undisciplined and unsophisticated rabble,” he replied, not bothering to disguise his contempt. “They have no concept of a proper chain of command, no respect for rank, and their weapons and equipment are museum pieces.”

“How do they compare to American special forces units?” Walsh asked.

“An American unit of similar size, like Delta Force or the Navy’s DEVGRU, has a budget about twenty times that of the SAS, and there are major equipment level differences between the two forces, both in comms and weaponry. In technology terms, Ma’am, the SAS lag far behind our units: half their weapons and radios are antiques that date back to the Sixties or earlier. They’re always understrength, too, far moreso than any American unit.”

“Are they any good?”

“They’re just English soldiers, Ma’am.”

Walsh gave Finn a hard stare. “And what exactly does that mean, Agent Finn?” she pressed. “When I ask you a question, I expect an informative answer.”

“Director, all English soldiers have no sense of honour, duty, or patriotism; they have no love for God or Country,” Finn said disgustedly. “They fight for one thing and one thing only: money. They’re no better than mercenaries.”*

Oh, yeah, way to describe the military unit who's been the basic prototype for all worldwide special forces/counter-terrorism groups since WWII.

Selecting from just one of Finn's scathing statements: Yes, the SAS is small. That's because they hand-pick their applicants and then run them through perhaps the roughest training courses in the Western countries (during which candidates have died). Finn seems to have entirely missed the point that this produces "soldiers which are physically and mentally robust and have the confidence, courage, and skill to operate individually or in small teams, often in isolation and in a hostile environment" (quote is from Wikipedia). Sunnydale certainly qualifies as a hostile environment, and not merely staying alive but handily taking care of its more bellicose unearthly inhabitants should impress anybody, even someone who's managed to perform a self-inflicted proctological examination via cranial insertion.

So, given Finn's belittling and disparging comments, I thought it likely he was what I said above. Your response to eriktheviking's review gave a much simpler explanation which I should've considered instead:

Riley Finn is an idiot.

...

...Oh-kaaaaaay... I give up: you've completely lost me.

Hmm... Now THERE'S a first - I've never had a review that thoroughly bewildered me before. :)

Anyhow, I've no earthly - or, for that matter, UN-earthly - idea where you came up with this... theory... of yours, but I don't have anything like that planned. (Hope that doesn't disappoint you or anything.)

...In fact, I don't think I've ever even considered for an instant using a plot twist that bemusing before... I mean, I've considered doing some absolutely crazy stuff before (and Marcus S. Lazarus has - thankfully - talked me out of the REALLY out-there utterly bat-sh!t insane plot twists that I've run past him) but that's truly bizarre even by MY bungee elastic standards...

Anyhow, thanks for reviewing - it might make no sense to me, but hey! :) A review's still a review.

Best wishes,

El ;)


Edited to add: Yup, that's the bunny rabbit - Occam's Razor. :)

You know, that phrase - "Riley Finn is an idiot." - sounds like it's just begging to be put on a bumper sticker... just a passing thought. ;)

Best wishes, and ride free!

El ;)