Bad Trip, Chapter 7
Mar. 23rd, 2004 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookOkay, amazing Chapter 7 is up and running! We've been working on this one at a sort of white heat lately - three updates in two days, whew! - so we'll be taking a short break after this one. We need to gather our forces for the next exciting phase in the saga, in which there will be more road tripping. Stay tuned!
ACT SEVEN: BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
It wasn't until about an hour after daybreak that Kennedy was able to get through to the Wolfram & Hart offices again. The phone lines had been down ever since the previous evening's momentary blackout--"Due to a freak electrical surge upriver at Great Falls," claimed the morning news broadcast--and she and Willow had passed a tense and exhausting night, too anxious and apprehensive to do more than fitfully doze. But this time, when she stomped across the parking lot to the pay phone and hoisted the receiver, Kennedy heard an expectant buzz rather than dead silence. With a small sigh of relief, she tapped out the collect-call sequence, then frowned as she heard a familiar British accent.
"Sirk here," the achivist confirmed. "Mister, ah, Angel thought you might attempt to call back once the connection had been restored."
"So where's the boss-man at?" Kennedy asked.
"He thought it best that I deliver the bad news." Somehow, Sirk didn't sound terribly disappointed. "We regret to inform you that we will be unable to offer you further assistance in this matter."
The plastic of the phone receiver gave a warning crack as Kennedy's grip tightened. "Come again? Can't you at least finish the damn story?"
"It appears," Sirk drawled, "that the only extant copies of the Abyssinian Codex, including the original Cushitic and the various translated passages, have abruptly gone missing from the company's archives."
"What?" Kennedy growled. "Somebody stole it right out from under your nose? Some librarian you must be."
"Young woman, my responsibility is merely to control access to the index volumes." The archivist's voice was icy with controlled displeasure. "The maintenance of the source materials is under the purview"--he sounded out the word slowly, as if introducing it to an audience of children on an educational TV show--"of a different department, where a number of staff vacancies seem to have opened up overnight. A condition which is, I note, also true of the Manuscript Translations division."
Kennedy's brow furrowed. "Mind putting that in English? Are you saying these people are dead?"
Ignoring her, Sirk returned to his recitation. "At this juncture, it is the view of upper management that further involement in this matter would not be compatible with the company's best interests. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope that we will have the opportunity to work with you in future on other issues of mutual interest."
"Now hold on a minute!" she sputtered into the receiver. "You can't just--"
"And on a personal note," Sirk concluded impersonally, "please convey our warmest regards to your father."
Then the line went dead, and when Kennedy dialed again there was no answer. At length she gave up with a shrug and returned to the cabins, where Xander had begun the slow process of rallying the troops for breakfast.
..........
The Flapjack Shack had largely emptied out by the time Xander, Willow, Kennedy, and the four junior Slayers arrived. After brief deliberation they placed their orders, then waited quietly for the platters of blueberry waffles and short-stack pancakes to materialize.
"Man, I think I could use another shot of coffee," Xander yawned. "Having the hardest time waking up this morning."
Kennedy sighed, swirling the spoon in her glass of iced tea. "And here I was going to ask if you could handle the driving for today." She glanced at the seat next to her, where Willow sat with her head dangling down. A rhythmic buzz, the faint but recognizable sound of snoring, was coming from behind the red curtain of Willow's hair. "Well, I'm glad one of us getting some rest."
The minutes passed. Graciela and Bet debated in urgent whispers, with Bet stubbornly insisting against all reasonable evidence that there had to be a viable alternate path through the maze on the restaurant's kiddie placemat. Willow opened her bleary eyes as the food arrived, and Xander and Kennedy requested another round of beverages, then sat, thoughtfully sipping their drinks, as the rest of the party set about dismantling breakfast.
At last, Neena could take no more. Clearing her throat, she looked down the table and caught her comrade's eye.
"Excuse me, Lo," Neena said, a little louder than strictly necessary. "Would you mind passing the OSIRIS?"
Willow started guiltily, popping up a couple of inches out of her chair. Kennedy began to interject, but Xander, peering up from the platter where he'd been slowly dissecting his final slice of French Toast, gave her a mischievous smile. "Okay, Will. Looks like you get to go first."
It took almost an hour for them to complete their stories. By the time Xander had taken his turn and finished recounting his disconcerting wake-up call, an unmistakable mood of anxiety had settled over the table. Even Bet had abandoned her side project of doodling absent-mindedly in her syrup and sat immobile, turning gradually paler as the tale unfolded.
"I think I get it now," Willow mused after Xander had finished his account. "That stuff you said you saw them take from the ground, and put into that girl. And what Sirk said about 'substance without form... shapeless darkness.'" She gazed down at her plate, where the remnants of a Garden Dee-Lite omelet had been mashed into something equally amorphous. "It's the same thing, isn't it? The, the raw substance of chaos. The body of The First."
"Yep. The good stuff," Xander replied dryly.
"And now it's in us." The others were surprised to see Lo beginning to cry, streaks of black mascara making their way down her cheeks. "It's in Bet and Graciela, and all the other girls. Hundreds of them, for all we know. And they didn't even get to make a choice." She stared at Willow, and there was hate in her dark eyes. "How could you let this happen to us?!"
"Please, Lo. Don't." Bet's voice was soft, but her expression was uncharacteristically resolute. "There wasn't another way." The others turned to look at her, and Neena gave the younger girl a subtle, encouraging nod.
Bet pondered for a moment, then continued, addressing the end of the table where Xander and Willow sat. "I think it, The First, it was hurting us to make you guys do something. And maybe you just ended up doing what it wanted you to. But what else could you do?" She turned, pleading to Lo and the other young Slayers. "Don't you see? It wasn't going to stop. It would have just kept hurting us, over and over again, until it got what it wanted!"
Graciela felt a chill run down her spine, a big one, like a chunk of ice slithering down into her guts. "And when it had used us all up... it would have just gone and gotten some more. Because there were still so many of us left."
The group paused, digesting the idea, and Neena spoke up. "Don't ask us to forgive you," she said, contemplatively twisting a strand of her long black hair. "But we can't blame you either. None of us knew what we were doing." A note of anger crept into her voice. "It didn't want us to know."
Willow leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling, clutching her head as if willing herself to think. "I don't understand," she groaned. "It was never like this before. Buffy's been a Slayer for seven years, and nothing like this ever happened to her. Why is it different now? What was it that we did?"
Kennedy patted Willow's shoulder soothingly. "It's okay, Red. You'll figure it out, I know it." She glanced around the table. "But we have to stay safe while we're working on this. Be careful, take precautions."
Neena nodded. "Even if The First now has the ability to somehow take possession of Slayers, it can only be in one place, one person, at a time. As long as we stick together, we should be alright." She reached across the table, took Lo's hand, and smiled at her. "Okay, Lo?"
Xander clasped his hands, elbows resting on the table to either side of his plate, and looked around the table. His eye took in each of them in turn. Willow, struggling to channel her fear and frustration into a search for solutions. Kennedy, her smoothly beautiful face starting to show the first tiny creases of worry, of the cares of the world that Buffy Summers had shouldered for so long. Neena, solemn and dignified, but with her free hand nervously tearing at the paper placemat, betraying the anxiety beneath the calm surface. Lo, still sniffling, wiping her eyes with one black sleeve, a jumble of crosses and ankhs around her pale neck. Graciela, scratching at her temples as she pondered, oversized hoop earrings jangling in time with the bobbing of her head. And Bet, looking so young with her mop of blonde curls and baby-blue Powerpuff Girls shirt, her small face a mask of determination.
My girls, he thought with a rush of fierce pride. My superheroes. I won't let you down.
"We're going to work this," Xander declared. His six companions turned to look at him, faces lit with expectant hope. "I don't know what The First is trying to stop us from finding out, and I don't know what good it's gonna do us when we figure it out. But somehow, I know it's what we have to do. It's what we have to do to make this right."
And it did feel right, for a little while. But when they piled into the van and rode on, they rode in silence. Eyeing each other, looking for the stray moment when the shadow of something else might pass across the face of a friend, peering out through her eyes. And when night came, when they lay down in their beds and sleeping bags, none of them slept well.
..........
It was three in the morning in Tokyo, and Takeshi was running as fast as he could. His heart wasn't pounding, and his lungs didn't gasp for air, but his fatigue was immense. It had been three days since he'd last fed, and he'd spent those days on the run--hiding by daylight, running by night. Now the exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him.
Just a couple more hours, Takeshi thought. Then the trains will be running again, and I'll be rid of this town. He zigged left, headed for Shinjuku Station. Busiest intersection in the world, he thought. I'll be safe in that kind of crowd. But it's going to be so tantalizing... All those warm bodies, and I won't be able to touch, to taste.
He passed the modest neon sign of a capsule hotel. With a pang, he remembered drunken nights out with Masaru and Yoshi and Kei. That time when they raided the hotel, yanking hungover salarymen out of their soundproofed capsule berths one by one, gorging themselves on blood until they swelled like ticks. Masaru thumping him on the back as he vomited red gore in the lobby, saying That's right, make room for more! And later that night, with Kei in the love hotel... Good times, now gone forever. All that mattered now was survival.
Takeshi sprinted around the corner and skidded to a halt. He stood in the middle of the street in front of Shinjuku Station, the same broad crossing where he'd passed so many evenings in his old life, watching as the daily four million passengers filed in and out, scoping out the girls, making small talk... before Yoshi showed him a new way to live. But there were no people there now, no cars, no buses. The storefronts of the shopping arcades were dark, the towering video billboards silent. A tattered newspaper blew across the deserted street. Looking about in shock, noticing, really noticing the city around him for the first time since he began running, Takeshi took in the boarded-up broken windows, the curls of barbed wire, the ominous stains and scorch marks that spotted the buildings like bruises.
But it's only been three days, Takeshi thought. What the hell has been happening?
An armored police van rolled through the intersection a block to his left, the speakers on its roof blaring a pre-recorded warning to go home, lock your doors, stay inside. Then it was quiet again, with the scurrying of the rats the only movement. He looked down at his feet, and saw the asphalt had begun to crack; he could glimpse veins of dark earth in the gaps.
There was a giggle. Takeshi's head whipped around, and he saw a teenage girl in a school uniform, pleated skirt, loose socks bunched around her ankles. Walking towards him, unafraid. And in her hand the curved blade of a dagger.
He turned, took a long stride, then stopped again. Another girl was approaching from the other direction, sauntering coquettishly towards him, the tip of a finger in her mouth.
"Yuki-chan, tore!" The girl behind him flipped the dagger over his head, and her companion reached up and snatched it out of the air with preternatural agility. "Tomo-chan, domo," the second girl replied, and lunged at Takeshi, drawing the blade across his forearm as he dodged aside.
Takeshi ran blindly. The two girls followed, tossing the dagger back and forth as they pursued him, giggling with excitement. Every now and then they'd land a blow, and soon he was covered with shallow cuts, the blood streaming down his legs, dripping from his clenched fists. He turned down a back street, his sneakers leaving a trail of bloody footprints, and the girls came after him.
Too late, Takeshi realized this was a blind alley. He looked about desperately, and saw no windows he could break, no doors he could force, no ladders he could climb. At last he turned about to face his pursuers.
The two girls stood there for a few seconds, watching him, savoring the anticipation. Then Yukiko dashed forward, knife in hand, and slashed him hard across the belly. Takeshi's knees buckled. "Watashi wa kiku no mimi," the girl said, tapping her ear with her free hand. "Watashi wa miru no me." She cut him again, this time across the face.
Yukiko tossed the dagger to Tomoko, who stepped forward and grabbed Takeshi's hair, yanking his head up. As he gasped in pain, she drove the knife up under his chin, twisting the blade as it slid into his throat. "Watashi wa hanasu no shita," she smiled, and her teeth were dazzling, perfect. "Watashi wa satsu no te." The knife plunged into Takeshi's heart, twisting and tearing, and he was aware of nothing more.
The two girls stepped back as the dust settled to the ground, then bent over the sizable puddle of blood that had spilled from the vampire in his final moments. "Chi," Yukiko breathed. She reached into the pool, then lifted her fingertips to her face, drawing wet red streaks down her cheeks.
"Teki no chi, chi e no chi." Tomoko placed her hand in the blood, palm down, and drew the same patterns on her own face. "Shi kara sei. Sei kara shi."
There was an exclamation of surprise. A policeman, kitted out in full riot gear and with his baton at the ready, was standing halfway down the alley, holding a flashlight on the two girls. His alarm softened into concern, and he lowered the baton, stepped forward, asking them if they were alright.
Yukiko and Tomoko looked up from their work. Their painted faces were feral, and their eyes were pits of black. With a wordless snarl, they leapt.
ACT SEVEN: BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
It wasn't until about an hour after daybreak that Kennedy was able to get through to the Wolfram & Hart offices again. The phone lines had been down ever since the previous evening's momentary blackout--"Due to a freak electrical surge upriver at Great Falls," claimed the morning news broadcast--and she and Willow had passed a tense and exhausting night, too anxious and apprehensive to do more than fitfully doze. But this time, when she stomped across the parking lot to the pay phone and hoisted the receiver, Kennedy heard an expectant buzz rather than dead silence. With a small sigh of relief, she tapped out the collect-call sequence, then frowned as she heard a familiar British accent.
"Sirk here," the achivist confirmed. "Mister, ah, Angel thought you might attempt to call back once the connection had been restored."
"So where's the boss-man at?" Kennedy asked.
"He thought it best that I deliver the bad news." Somehow, Sirk didn't sound terribly disappointed. "We regret to inform you that we will be unable to offer you further assistance in this matter."
The plastic of the phone receiver gave a warning crack as Kennedy's grip tightened. "Come again? Can't you at least finish the damn story?"
"It appears," Sirk drawled, "that the only extant copies of the Abyssinian Codex, including the original Cushitic and the various translated passages, have abruptly gone missing from the company's archives."
"What?" Kennedy growled. "Somebody stole it right out from under your nose? Some librarian you must be."
"Young woman, my responsibility is merely to control access to the index volumes." The archivist's voice was icy with controlled displeasure. "The maintenance of the source materials is under the purview"--he sounded out the word slowly, as if introducing it to an audience of children on an educational TV show--"of a different department, where a number of staff vacancies seem to have opened up overnight. A condition which is, I note, also true of the Manuscript Translations division."
Kennedy's brow furrowed. "Mind putting that in English? Are you saying these people are dead?"
Ignoring her, Sirk returned to his recitation. "At this juncture, it is the view of upper management that further involement in this matter would not be compatible with the company's best interests. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope that we will have the opportunity to work with you in future on other issues of mutual interest."
"Now hold on a minute!" she sputtered into the receiver. "You can't just--"
"And on a personal note," Sirk concluded impersonally, "please convey our warmest regards to your father."
Then the line went dead, and when Kennedy dialed again there was no answer. At length she gave up with a shrug and returned to the cabins, where Xander had begun the slow process of rallying the troops for breakfast.
..........
The Flapjack Shack had largely emptied out by the time Xander, Willow, Kennedy, and the four junior Slayers arrived. After brief deliberation they placed their orders, then waited quietly for the platters of blueberry waffles and short-stack pancakes to materialize.
"Man, I think I could use another shot of coffee," Xander yawned. "Having the hardest time waking up this morning."
Kennedy sighed, swirling the spoon in her glass of iced tea. "And here I was going to ask if you could handle the driving for today." She glanced at the seat next to her, where Willow sat with her head dangling down. A rhythmic buzz, the faint but recognizable sound of snoring, was coming from behind the red curtain of Willow's hair. "Well, I'm glad one of us getting some rest."
The minutes passed. Graciela and Bet debated in urgent whispers, with Bet stubbornly insisting against all reasonable evidence that there had to be a viable alternate path through the maze on the restaurant's kiddie placemat. Willow opened her bleary eyes as the food arrived, and Xander and Kennedy requested another round of beverages, then sat, thoughtfully sipping their drinks, as the rest of the party set about dismantling breakfast.
At last, Neena could take no more. Clearing her throat, she looked down the table and caught her comrade's eye.
"Excuse me, Lo," Neena said, a little louder than strictly necessary. "Would you mind passing the OSIRIS?"
Willow started guiltily, popping up a couple of inches out of her chair. Kennedy began to interject, but Xander, peering up from the platter where he'd been slowly dissecting his final slice of French Toast, gave her a mischievous smile. "Okay, Will. Looks like you get to go first."
It took almost an hour for them to complete their stories. By the time Xander had taken his turn and finished recounting his disconcerting wake-up call, an unmistakable mood of anxiety had settled over the table. Even Bet had abandoned her side project of doodling absent-mindedly in her syrup and sat immobile, turning gradually paler as the tale unfolded.
"I think I get it now," Willow mused after Xander had finished his account. "That stuff you said you saw them take from the ground, and put into that girl. And what Sirk said about 'substance without form... shapeless darkness.'" She gazed down at her plate, where the remnants of a Garden Dee-Lite omelet had been mashed into something equally amorphous. "It's the same thing, isn't it? The, the raw substance of chaos. The body of The First."
"Yep. The good stuff," Xander replied dryly.
"And now it's in us." The others were surprised to see Lo beginning to cry, streaks of black mascara making their way down her cheeks. "It's in Bet and Graciela, and all the other girls. Hundreds of them, for all we know. And they didn't even get to make a choice." She stared at Willow, and there was hate in her dark eyes. "How could you let this happen to us?!"
"Please, Lo. Don't." Bet's voice was soft, but her expression was uncharacteristically resolute. "There wasn't another way." The others turned to look at her, and Neena gave the younger girl a subtle, encouraging nod.
Bet pondered for a moment, then continued, addressing the end of the table where Xander and Willow sat. "I think it, The First, it was hurting us to make you guys do something. And maybe you just ended up doing what it wanted you to. But what else could you do?" She turned, pleading to Lo and the other young Slayers. "Don't you see? It wasn't going to stop. It would have just kept hurting us, over and over again, until it got what it wanted!"
Graciela felt a chill run down her spine, a big one, like a chunk of ice slithering down into her guts. "And when it had used us all up... it would have just gone and gotten some more. Because there were still so many of us left."
The group paused, digesting the idea, and Neena spoke up. "Don't ask us to forgive you," she said, contemplatively twisting a strand of her long black hair. "But we can't blame you either. None of us knew what we were doing." A note of anger crept into her voice. "It didn't want us to know."
Willow leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling, clutching her head as if willing herself to think. "I don't understand," she groaned. "It was never like this before. Buffy's been a Slayer for seven years, and nothing like this ever happened to her. Why is it different now? What was it that we did?"
Kennedy patted Willow's shoulder soothingly. "It's okay, Red. You'll figure it out, I know it." She glanced around the table. "But we have to stay safe while we're working on this. Be careful, take precautions."
Neena nodded. "Even if The First now has the ability to somehow take possession of Slayers, it can only be in one place, one person, at a time. As long as we stick together, we should be alright." She reached across the table, took Lo's hand, and smiled at her. "Okay, Lo?"
Xander clasped his hands, elbows resting on the table to either side of his plate, and looked around the table. His eye took in each of them in turn. Willow, struggling to channel her fear and frustration into a search for solutions. Kennedy, her smoothly beautiful face starting to show the first tiny creases of worry, of the cares of the world that Buffy Summers had shouldered for so long. Neena, solemn and dignified, but with her free hand nervously tearing at the paper placemat, betraying the anxiety beneath the calm surface. Lo, still sniffling, wiping her eyes with one black sleeve, a jumble of crosses and ankhs around her pale neck. Graciela, scratching at her temples as she pondered, oversized hoop earrings jangling in time with the bobbing of her head. And Bet, looking so young with her mop of blonde curls and baby-blue Powerpuff Girls shirt, her small face a mask of determination.
My girls, he thought with a rush of fierce pride. My superheroes. I won't let you down.
"We're going to work this," Xander declared. His six companions turned to look at him, faces lit with expectant hope. "I don't know what The First is trying to stop us from finding out, and I don't know what good it's gonna do us when we figure it out. But somehow, I know it's what we have to do. It's what we have to do to make this right."
And it did feel right, for a little while. But when they piled into the van and rode on, they rode in silence. Eyeing each other, looking for the stray moment when the shadow of something else might pass across the face of a friend, peering out through her eyes. And when night came, when they lay down in their beds and sleeping bags, none of them slept well.
..........
It was three in the morning in Tokyo, and Takeshi was running as fast as he could. His heart wasn't pounding, and his lungs didn't gasp for air, but his fatigue was immense. It had been three days since he'd last fed, and he'd spent those days on the run--hiding by daylight, running by night. Now the exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him.
Just a couple more hours, Takeshi thought. Then the trains will be running again, and I'll be rid of this town. He zigged left, headed for Shinjuku Station. Busiest intersection in the world, he thought. I'll be safe in that kind of crowd. But it's going to be so tantalizing... All those warm bodies, and I won't be able to touch, to taste.
He passed the modest neon sign of a capsule hotel. With a pang, he remembered drunken nights out with Masaru and Yoshi and Kei. That time when they raided the hotel, yanking hungover salarymen out of their soundproofed capsule berths one by one, gorging themselves on blood until they swelled like ticks. Masaru thumping him on the back as he vomited red gore in the lobby, saying That's right, make room for more! And later that night, with Kei in the love hotel... Good times, now gone forever. All that mattered now was survival.
Takeshi sprinted around the corner and skidded to a halt. He stood in the middle of the street in front of Shinjuku Station, the same broad crossing where he'd passed so many evenings in his old life, watching as the daily four million passengers filed in and out, scoping out the girls, making small talk... before Yoshi showed him a new way to live. But there were no people there now, no cars, no buses. The storefronts of the shopping arcades were dark, the towering video billboards silent. A tattered newspaper blew across the deserted street. Looking about in shock, noticing, really noticing the city around him for the first time since he began running, Takeshi took in the boarded-up broken windows, the curls of barbed wire, the ominous stains and scorch marks that spotted the buildings like bruises.
But it's only been three days, Takeshi thought. What the hell has been happening?
An armored police van rolled through the intersection a block to his left, the speakers on its roof blaring a pre-recorded warning to go home, lock your doors, stay inside. Then it was quiet again, with the scurrying of the rats the only movement. He looked down at his feet, and saw the asphalt had begun to crack; he could glimpse veins of dark earth in the gaps.
There was a giggle. Takeshi's head whipped around, and he saw a teenage girl in a school uniform, pleated skirt, loose socks bunched around her ankles. Walking towards him, unafraid. And in her hand the curved blade of a dagger.
He turned, took a long stride, then stopped again. Another girl was approaching from the other direction, sauntering coquettishly towards him, the tip of a finger in her mouth.
"Yuki-chan, tore!" The girl behind him flipped the dagger over his head, and her companion reached up and snatched it out of the air with preternatural agility. "Tomo-chan, domo," the second girl replied, and lunged at Takeshi, drawing the blade across his forearm as he dodged aside.
Takeshi ran blindly. The two girls followed, tossing the dagger back and forth as they pursued him, giggling with excitement. Every now and then they'd land a blow, and soon he was covered with shallow cuts, the blood streaming down his legs, dripping from his clenched fists. He turned down a back street, his sneakers leaving a trail of bloody footprints, and the girls came after him.
Too late, Takeshi realized this was a blind alley. He looked about desperately, and saw no windows he could break, no doors he could force, no ladders he could climb. At last he turned about to face his pursuers.
The two girls stood there for a few seconds, watching him, savoring the anticipation. Then Yukiko dashed forward, knife in hand, and slashed him hard across the belly. Takeshi's knees buckled. "Watashi wa kiku no mimi," the girl said, tapping her ear with her free hand. "Watashi wa miru no me." She cut him again, this time across the face.
Yukiko tossed the dagger to Tomoko, who stepped forward and grabbed Takeshi's hair, yanking his head up. As he gasped in pain, she drove the knife up under his chin, twisting the blade as it slid into his throat. "Watashi wa hanasu no shita," she smiled, and her teeth were dazzling, perfect. "Watashi wa satsu no te." The knife plunged into Takeshi's heart, twisting and tearing, and he was aware of nothing more.
The two girls stepped back as the dust settled to the ground, then bent over the sizable puddle of blood that had spilled from the vampire in his final moments. "Chi," Yukiko breathed. She reached into the pool, then lifted her fingertips to her face, drawing wet red streaks down her cheeks.
"Teki no chi, chi e no chi." Tomoko placed her hand in the blood, palm down, and drew the same patterns on her own face. "Shi kara sei. Sei kara shi."
There was an exclamation of surprise. A policeman, kitted out in full riot gear and with his baton at the ready, was standing halfway down the alley, holding a flashlight on the two girls. His alarm softened into concern, and he lowered the baton, stepped forward, asking them if they were alright.
Yukiko and Tomoko looked up from their work. Their painted faces were feral, and their eyes were pits of black. With a wordless snarl, they leapt.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 09:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 10:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 10:44 am (UTC)Interesting to see how the demented schoolgirls (which I guess are Slayers controlled by the First? Or Harbringer-like servants?) fit in. All in all, I'm a little confused by the whole thing. Which is totally fine, as long as _you_ know where it's going *lol*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 10:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 10:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 10:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 04:46 pm (UTC)The Japanese lines in this scene are actually just translations of the ritual chants introduced earlier in the story - "I am the eye that watches" (albeit slightly reordered to make it rhyme in Japanese) and "Blood of the enemy, blood to the earth..." I figure that, as with "From beneath you it devours," these things just get creepier with repetition. :-)
Hopefully, the next installment should make it very clear what's going on with the schoolgirls...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 07:48 pm (UTC)Yes yes yes they are. But usually I like being creeped out so keep up the good work!!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 12:46 pm (UTC)This to me seems reminiscent of "Restless" when Buffy paints her face with the mud in her dream before she goes out to meet the first slayer in the desert. Maybe I'm reading too much into it?
Man, those girls were creepy! I would NOT want to meet them in the alley! What happened in Tokyo? Did I miss something? Why were all the streets deserted and the police telling everyone to go home?
I don't know what's going to happen but I'm totally psyched to find out!! This is really really really x infinity excellent! Love love love!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 01:21 pm (UTC)No, you're absolutely on target.
What happened in Tokyo? Did I miss something? Why were all the streets deserted and the police telling everyone to go home?
Heh heh heh.
You'll see.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 02:01 pm (UTC)And whew, I thought I had maybe missed something on the Tokyo front!
*waiting impatiently for more more more!*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 07:38 pm (UTC)And we saw something similar this season on Angel...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 07:51 pm (UTC)I've only seen most of the episodes of this season's Angel once, but I've seen the Buffy ones lots more. Probably why I thought of that first. Also cause of the whole desert, first slayer motif!
I'm so excited about this fic, I am pimping it all over my LJ! Which, probably means not a whole lot, cause umm, I only have like 20 friends. But still, I'm pimping away!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-26 09:46 am (UTC)Thank you for the pimpage! This is still kind of a rough work-in-progress for us, so the comments are really helping us tighten up the writing as we go. Because as you can now see, what we're building here is more or less a mystery story, and that takes technique. Or at least dropping the right clues in the right places.... so far, people seem to be picking up on exactly what they're supposed to be asking questions about right now, which is an encouraging sign. Hopefully, we'll be able to pay all this off to everyone's satisfaction. Heh heh heh.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-26 10:11 am (UTC)::tries::
::fails::
Ahh! more! Wow, I'm so impatient!
And don't be worried if people don't pick up on something, cause they can always go back and reread parts for more clues! Thats actually part of the fun! When its all done and look for all the things you missed! But I like to read closely so then I can smarter than the people who didn't pick up on them! ::feels superior::
No I'm just kidding!
But this has been really really great so far!
And now I'm done rambling :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-26 12:01 am (UTC)So someone killed the people with access to the materials and swiped the books? Or am I stupid?
Nope, you got it. Hence the withdrawal of W&H and its plot-distorting resources from the adventure now in progress. Figure it doesn't hurt to sow some extra distrust between the Buffy and Angel factions while we're at it...
Hee! OK, I like Neena. She and Lo are a good team. Is she Indian (I'm getting that for some reason)?
Yep. I think we made passing reference to her accent in an earlier chapter, but as the Hook keeps reminding me, I seem to have a terrible aversion to expository narration...
Has Kennedy just not told them that W&H can't help anymore, and something happened there? Is that a plot point?
The plot point is that Kennedy (and Xander, and Willow) haven't told them anything, in typical Scooby fashion, so Neena's using the tidbits she got from last night's eavesdropping to kickstart the conversation. Maybe I should try and spell that out more clearly...
I'm thinking RESURRECTION maybe? Something like that?
Heh heh heh.
Aw. It's a Xander-Watcher!
Exactly. After they stressed the "guy who sees everything" line so heavily in Season Seven, it seemed only logical. Makes more sense than trying to turn the poor guy into a sword-swinging Action Hero.
Er, maybe a translation in endnotes might be handy?
Hm, good idea. I couldn't think of an elegant way to do it in prose, but footnotes would work.
Right there with everyone else on the "Restless" image -- nicely done.
Slayers be kickin' it old school - really old school!
And "chi," hunh? The Slayers or the First-in-the-Slayers is getting off on the chi of the vampire maybe?
Not quite. The Japanese pronunciation for that term is actually "ki." The Japanese word "chi," on the other hand, means "blood." Or "earth." It's used in both senses in the ritual chant - "chi e no chi" being "blood to the earth," the same thing the spear-wielding tribesmen chanted while they were bleeding that Ubervamp back in Chapter Six. Hm...
And HEY, I thought the gang said that only one person could be possessed at once!
Yep, they did say that. Funny thing, huh?
And how are they possessed and Buffy possessed at the same time?
Good question. Wonder if this might become a plot point later on? Gwa ha ha!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-26 01:59 pm (UTC)Yeah, more the the other kind. :-)
ARGH! sorry....but then Kennedy spills the beans, right?
Well, as part of the general debriefing session, yes. I figure that after the "pass the Osiris" bit, Willow, Kennedy, and Xander then go ahead and recount pretty much everything that happened in the preceding chapters, including the previous scene of this one. Given the track record of these characters, I didn't think we could take it for granted that they'd actually discuss this stuff amongst themselves unless we specified it in the story.
(I mean, consider "Chosen," where Buffy's most trusted friends ask her if she learned anything important about the axe in the Luxor crypt, and she shrugs and says "It slices, it dices, it makes julienned preacher." And this is after Whedon's made them happy fun friends again!)
I did get that they weren't telling Neena anything, but I was just confused whether or not Kennedy went ahead and told the others specifically about W&H.
Oh, you mean whether she told Willow et al? I see. Maybe we should add a reference to that someplace.
Oh. Duh. See, this is where a little glossary thing at the end would be helpful for ignorant people, because I thought "Oh it's like chi in tai chi classes!"
Gotcha. I'll do likewise when I have Krycek show up and whisper sweet nothings in Willow's ear. :-)