Trace Coburn’s Plot-Tribble Sanctuary (snippets and offcuts, mostly Buffy-related)

I’ve been all but monopolising the Buffy-verse thread for a while now, using it as an ersatz beta-read forum, and for all that I’ve enjoyed the added ‘Likes’ and gotten some useful and interesting comments out of it, it’s probably high time to move it into its own room, instead of just camping out in the middle of the common area and making people trip all over me.


Thread Index:
Snippets from Valhalla Can Wait [upcoming?]:
Prologue

Snippets from There is No Depression In New Zealand:
A Nightmare on Vigor-Brown Street (out-take from ch.3.)
Morning Routine I (out-take from ch.3.)
Morning Routine II (out-take from ch.3.)

Snippet from [unnamed upcoming fic]:
Escaped Slave and Unwilling Worm-bait

Snippets from Distance and Perspective:
Grasping for Paradise (out-take from ch.02)
Conversations and Complications (out-take from ch.02)
Negotiations (out-take from ch.02)
Scratch a Bully, Find a Coward (out-take from ch.02)
ABC Evening News [excerpt], October 7, 1997 (out-take from ch.02)
Ripping Off the Band-Aid (out-take from the trip to Martinique)

 

In drafting the next installment of There is No Depression in New Zealand (tentative chapter-title ‘Talk in This Town’), I came up with a scene that gets us right into the mind of my OC Slayer and portrays one of the terrors that underlies her every waking moment.
Unfortunately, unlike Harry Leferts and his Harry and the Shipgirls megathread(s), I can’t write-and-upload installments on a daily basis and thereby hook an audience into sticking around through 10+ updates and half-a-novel’s-wordcount full of slice-of-life stuff before I get on with things that are more directly plot-relevant, so this one is probably going to stay on the cutting-room floor for a good while.
Still, I like the insights it offers into Taz and her life, and to a lesser extent into one of her closest friends, so I’d like to see what the readership thinks.

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The TV3 Six O’Clock News Hour was just ending. Taz was in her living-room, still dressed for school in scarlet sweater and skirt, standing at the sliding door into the dining-room, watching Misha and Mama corral the giggling twins onto the couch with broad smiles on their own faces. Mama was wearing soft track-pants and a woolly-pully jersey, Misha jeans and a checked shirt over a T-shirt.

“C’mon, you two, settle down!” he chided the children through his grin. He flicked the TV over to channel 6 (tuned to the video player), then hefted a beige-and-red VHS case with the Video Ezy logo, showing off a tape newly-released for rental. “You can’t watch ‘D2: The Mighty Ducks’ if you’re bouncing around everywhere and chattering ninety to the dozen!”

“Where’s Taz?” Kolya asked.

“Right here!” the Slayer heard, and looked across the room to see – Wait, how can that be me!? – coming in from the hallway, dressed much the same as her mother. Her doppelgänger crossed to where Misha stood and kissed him, briefly but sweetly. “A night off to just relax and let my boyfriend rent a movie. Will wonders ever cease?”

“Maybe when you two stop pashing each other up and actually put the movie on, they will!” Katya snarked.

Civvies-Taz gave her niece an old-fashioned look, then let Misha go and stretched out on the floor in front of the couch, resting her head on a cushion and her folded hands, while Misha loaded the video-player. Unspooling the lead for the remote, he laid down next to his lover and hit the ‘play’ button.

School-Taz watched all this with some bemusement, leaning against the frame of the sliding-door but quite content to just enjoy such a peaceful, domestic moment. Other-me is right. Heaven knows we don’t get the chance to do this often enough.

Then static crackled in her ear. {“Hotel Seven, Eagle Three: holding at the IP.”}

{“Copy, Eagle Three: stand by.”}

“What the hell was that?” School-Taz wondered aloud over the movie’s credits. Her counterpart and her family didn’t seem to have heard it. Or her.

As the movie rolled and Charlie Banks cavorted around on his rollerblades, assembling his fellow Ducks from their off-season pursuits, School-Taz could feel unease climbing her spine, spreading through her body and limbs like the winter chill of Leningrad. Something is very wrong, here!

{“Hotel Seven, Eagle Three: are you sure about this targeting plot? I’m seeing a lot of collateral.”}

{“Relax, Eagle Three. Higher is all set to tell the press it was a tragic gas explosion.”}

Oh, NO! Horrified, School-Taz all but launched herself off the wall. “OUT! Everyone get out of here! The Stormers have called in an air-strike! GET OUT!”

None of the movie-watchers reacted at all. It was like she hadn’t spoken at all.

{“Eagle Three, Hotel Seven: you are cleared in hot.”}

{“Eagle Three, turning inbound.”}

“GET OUT!” she shrieked desperately, reaching for her mother. Her hand passed through the older woman, ghost-like; Elena Zyrianova gave no sign she’d felt or heard anything. “Mama, please, get out!”

{“Target is lit.”}

“Kolya, Katya, run! Get out of here!” she screamed at her niece and nephew, begging them to hear her. She’d helped raise the both of them, more like their big sister than an ‘aunt’, and they were as precious to her as if she was their mother! “RUN!”

But they didn’t move, smirking and chortling at the Ducks’ stunt-antics.

{“Target acquired, weapon is locked.”}

“Misha, for fuck’s sake, GET OUT OF HERE!” she wailed, tears welling from her eyes as she stood between her lover and the TV, hoping to block his view, anything that might get his attention!

Misha had eyes only for her doppelgänger, who had slipped down his body a little to rest her head on his shoulder.

{“Eagle Three: weapon away!”}

At the last instant, Civvies-Taz looked her standing counterpart right in the eye and shrugged, looking resigned and somehow infinitely tired. “You let the Stormers find you out. What did you think was going to happen?”

And then there was nothing but light and heat and flame....

Taz bolted upright, panting and sweaty, wild gaze flying around the room, one hand snatching her dagger from its sheath under her pillow before the rest of her mind could catch up. After several long, trembling seconds, she lowered the weapon again and put her free hand to her hammering heart, willing her pulse to slow back to normal. Dammit, I hate that fucking nightmare!

Hard on the heels of that: At least it wasn’t the full Terminator 2 riff where we have sideline seats to the Stormers putting a two-megaton laydown on Auckland.

Small mercies, I guess, she shrugged silently, taking a long, deep, shuddering breath, then letting it out, slow and smooth. Even so, there was still a fine tremor in her hands; it took a moment of deliberate focus to re-sheath her knife. ‘Aunt’ Sofia would be so disappointed in me if I cut myself with her gift. Tucking it back under her pillow, she glanced over at where Yukio lay. When sleep had taken the Japanese girl mid-conversation, she’d turned her lengthwise on the other bed and covered her with a spare duvet, not wanting to disturb her after the... unexpectedly stressful day she’d had. Thankfully, whatever noise she’d made in her distress, she hadn’t interrupted her guest’s sleep.

I hate sleeping alone. The nightmares never come when Misha’s here.

A glance at the bedside alarm-clock confirmed the time: just shy of 0530. Well, I was going to be up at six, anyway. If I’m already awake, I might as well get started, the Slayer sighed, reached over to kill the alarm, then flicked back the covers to stand up, shivering a little as the cool air raised goosebumps on her still-clammy body. It wasn’t a patch on the sub-zero mornings she’d endured in Leningrad, of course, but ‘cool’ was now and ‘freezing’ was seven years and half a world away. Stripping off her sweat-damp singlet and briefs, she balled them up and no-look sidearmed them into the laundry-basket at the foot of Yukio’s bed, then dug into her dressing-table’s drawers for replacements, once again sparing a curse for whatever perverted prat in the neighbourhood – probably Kelly’s shit of a little brother! – had pinched all of her bras off the washing-line last week.

Fifteen minutes and a brief shower later, she was sitting on the edge of her bed in her battered flannel dressing-gown, winding her hair into a towel, when a muffled scream came from the back room.

Danny!

The sheathed Ehrendolch had gone in the pocket of her robe, like always, and that fast, the blade was bared in her hand. Unlocking the verandah door, she into the spare room in two steps. Her eyes, as keen in the dark as any cat’s, swept the room for threats. Found nothing and no-one. Only Danny, crouched atop his bed, backed into the corner of the room, wild-eyed and sweaty.

Oh. Not really a surprise. She flicked the light on, letting her friend see her clearly, register her presence, realise he was safe... then, with deliberate motions, let him see her producing the dagger’s sheath and putting the blade away. By the time it went back into her pocket again, he’d taken a deep breath and swallowed most of his lingering panic. “I’m right, Taz, I’m right. Just... never had a nightmare like that before.”

“In all fairness, you’ve never had such good reason for them, before,” she noted dryly, half-sitting on the edge of the shelving-unit next to the door, heedless of how it made her gown gape open over her legs and chest. She was wearing briefs and a Ford singlet underneath, after all, however tight and white that ersatz camisole might be. “Wild guess: those Zal’kiirs, going through people at the restaurant like a Great Dane through Scooby Snax?”

“More or less,” he nodded. “Didn’t wake you, did I?”

Taz answered with a shake of her head. “I was already up. I’d had my own, you see: the Stormers putting a missile into my living-room during a movie night. Three houses to either side, all gone, nothing left of me or my family, my house nothing but a smoking crater and toothpicks.”

“Even an E-model Maverick’s not that big, Taz!” he protested reflexively, once again reminding her that this was a boy who spent every second Saturday morning at the public library, catching up on the latest issues of Jane’s Defence Weekly. “The front half of the house’d be gone, of course, but a lot of the frame at the back would still...” He trailed off as he registered her expression. “Aaaand me doing pre-emptive BDA is really missing the point. Sorry.”

“If I needed a professional opinion about ‘boom’, I’d ask Uncle Andrushka before you,” she admitted, a little apologetically. “He was handling explosives with ‘Them’ before either of us were born.”

“D’you really think the Stormers would go that far?” he marvelled. “They’re not that blatant about things, are they?”

She shook her head again, a little saddened by her friend’s naïveté, but not that surprised. “They’re very Russian that way, Danny: a stiletto can solve some problems, but others call for a sledgehammer. They’re already making incidents with demons eating people into standard crime-stories and human-on-human street-violence. A structural explosion would just be ‘an accident with a CNG line’ – or, if it suited their needs to start a fuss about domestic terrorism, they’d say someone had an accident in a bomb factory.”

“But... why not just send in a strike team to ‘disappear’ you?”

That got the full-throated laugh it deserved. “D’you remember the first time we visited your place? You stuffed your Mum’s new food-processor full of chipolatas and switched it on... without putting the lid on it?”

“That was your idea, and we were nine!” he protested. “But yeah, I remember. Mum and Dad grounded me for two weeks over that, and we were finding bits of sausage all over the kitchen for almost all of it.”

“Same thing. I’d love for Von Hausmann’s people to be that stupid, but I haven’t seen many signs of it yet,” she smiled crookedly. “Danny, you do not send light infantry after a Slayer in close quarters: all it gets you is a shitload of mincemeat.”

“Or sushi,” he added, almost to himself, then rubbed bleary eyes. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Almost six. Your Dad should be here soon.”

He grimaced at that mixed blessing. “He just loves going out of his way home from work to come here, doesn’t he? Let’s just hope he doesn’t see Yukio. Too much risk of ‘Enola Gay’ jokes.”

“I’ll keep him in line,” she assured her friend. Guest Rite cuts both ways. “Bathroom’s free, if you want to get cleaned up before he arrives.”

“Eh, thanks, but I’ll wait until I get home. Fresh clothes, and all that.”

“Okay.” Taz hopped down from her seat again and straightened out her gown. “You sure you’re all right?”

He gave her a brave smile. “Sweet as, mate!”

That wasn’t wholly convincing, but she let it go. “Khorosho,” she nodded... but paused just outside the door. “And, please: remember what I said. I have nightmares about a Stormhawk fighter-jet killing my whole family because of someone’s loose lips. If you need to talk to anyone, come to me, Misha, Mama, we’ll always be ready to listen... but you Do. Not. Say. ANYTHING. About any of this, to anyone else. All right?”

For an instant, his gaze dropped to the pocket where he’d seen her put away her dagger, then came back to meet her level eyes... and he gave her a single, grave nod.

“Thanks, Danny.”

As she crossed back into her own room, Taz inspected her dressing-gown’s left sleeve and tched her tongue in annoyance. In the scramble to get out to Danny, that thin spot over the elbow had finally split. I’ll have to sit down at Mama’s sewing machine and patch that. One more thing to do when I get home tonight. Probably better do the other elbow while I’m at it, though, since it’s going to give up the ghost any day now.

At the stroke of 0600, Elena’s alarm went off, and the habitual routine of twenty years as a nurse brought the elder Zyrianova into the dining-room in her own dressing-gown. A fully-dressed but yawning Danny waved ‘hi’ to her from the dinner-table as he sipped his Milo and wrote in a notebook; when she reached the open serve-over, Taz offered her a crooked smile and a steaming mug through the open shutters. «Good morning, Mama.»

Elena arched one greying eyebrow as she accepted the freshly-brewed tea. «Good morning, Tatyana. Trouble sleeping, then? Both you and Danya?»

«Nothing drastic,» Taz shrugged. “I needed to be up anyway — Mister Gulczyński will be here any minute.”

Elena met that with a rude noise. “Yukio?”

“I’ll wake her after we get the twins sorted out.”

“Khorosho.” With the well-honed skill of someone who’d learned how to bolt down drinks and meals between emergency-room admissions, Elena drained her tea in one long draught, handed her mug back to her daughter, and continued on to the bathroom. “Try not to work too hard!”

“Or you!” I appreciate the thought, Mama, but we both know that’s not entirely up to me.

A few minutes later, Taz watched impassively through the living-room front window, finishing the last of her own tea, as the headlights of a near-new red-over-grey Holden Calais swung into the driveway and a tall, bulky man with a sour expression dismounted. Looks like he’s in a mood, all right; better brace for the ‘commie’ jabs. She swung the door open as her guest reached the bottom step. “G’morning, Mister Gulczyński.”

“Hey, Dad,” Danny added quietly as he wheeled his bike around the side of the house, bag hooked over one shoulder. “Sorry about this, but Nonna –”

“Don’t worry, son,” Keith Gulczyński smiled. “I know how easy it is to get into an argument with The Frillneck. Let’s get going, though.”

“See you this arvo, Danny!” Taz called after her friend.

While his son was preoccupied with hooking his bike onto the Commodore’s boot-rack, the elder Gulczyński turned a piercing gaze on Taz. “Now, he could do with less encouragement to provoke her. My mother-in-law thinks children should be seen and not heard.”

“Odd, for an Italian woman. Try telling her what my father told me: ‘children who aren’t allowed to speak their minds turn into adults who don’t know how’,” she returned promptly, meeting the glare with faint amusement. D’you really think I can be intimidated by a mildly grumpy air-traffic controller? Please. Misha and I faced a drakkar loaded with fully-armed draugr last month, and they couldn’t make either of us back down!

“I have,” he said dryly. “My wife put me on the couch for three days after the last time. If I need to pull my head in, so does he. And you.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, sir.”

Gulczyński harumped. “Do that. Maybe add it to your Little Red Book?” he grinned, and turned away.

And the sad part is, you probably think that was actually funny. The ‘Little Red Book’ was for Chinese Communists, you dropkick, which disqualifies me on both counts, Taz managed not to say, giving his departing back a flat look. You can take the man out of Australia, but you can’t take the wilfully ignorant xenophobia out of the man....

(She knew that might not be entirely fair, and one-on-one she actually sort-of liked the fellow most of the time, but their little band of Four Hobbits at Marewa Primary had learned very early that bringing Kelly Hikurangi to Danny’s place was not the best idea. Almost a decade in New Zealand had blunted the edges of some of Keith Gulczyński’s worst mental and verbal habits, but the fact remained that he was a great bloke to be around... as long as you were white and spoke English.)

Shrugging that off, she turned back into the house. There wouldn’t be anything but a test-pattern on TV until 0630, and she didn’t have time for her usual morning run, so she might as well double-check her homework before she woke the twins and Yukio.

 

Taken from the working draft for the next update to Distance and Perspective, wherein the path of the righteous is beset by the inequities of the selfish....

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Sunnydale High School,
08:21, Tuesday, October 7, 1997

Xander headed for the lounge with a sigh. Ah, decisions, decisions. Will breakfast be a pair of Snickers bars today? Or do I go wild and pick up a twelve-ounce bag of M&Ms, then skimp on lunch by getting a ham-roll from the cafeteria without paying for the ketchup that actually masks the taste of the cardboard?

I know Mom’s trying to try, even through the hangover, but Jeez! Aren’t parents supposed to put more into making sure you have breakfast and lunch for the day than just handing you a half-roll of quarters?

“Harris, there you are!” A large hand fell on his shoulder.

He glanced around – and up, and up some more – at his accoster. Oh, wow. The best part of how much I need this is how much I really, really don’t. “Percy. How’s the air up there?”

The aspiring point-guard gave him a grin full of saccharine bonhomie. “We need to chat.”

“Gee, Perce, can it wait? I’m kind’a late for the most important meal of the day, here!”

“Funny.” The hand shifted, then shoved, and Xander bounced off the front of the vending machines. “I don’t know how you got picked for that trip, but it’s just too bad you’re not gonna be able to make it.”

Xander had never had much time for the school jocks – something about how most of them were preening, self-important jackasses who thought their ability at playing with their balls excused their being overbearing assholes with cruel streaks. And now, even mostly-sure that he wasn’t going anywhere anyway no matter what New Watcher Guy said, he found himself feeling oddly contrary. “Really? Why is that?”

“I don’t know, I don’t care.” Percy’s grin took on a nasty edge. “You pick something to tell Snyder. All I know is, you’re gonna stay here in Sunnydale, and I’m getting on that plane for an island getaway with Summers, Chase and Rosenberg. I could really do with some ooh-la-la before the season starts.”

Three words: ‘oh’, ‘hell’ and ‘no’. Xander straightened, his jaw setting – and his right fist closing tightly around the roll of quarters. “Yeeeaaah, not happening, Perce. Even if it was up to me, Buffy and Willow are my friends. Inflicting you on them for two weeks falls under ‘cruel and unusual punishment’.”

Percy’s nostrils flared, his whole face twisting in fury to match – and he grabbed a fistful of Xander’s shirt, the other hand bunching up. “You’re not listening, Harris –!”

“Percy!”

The basketballer’s head snapped around towards the interloper. Seeing who it was, he instantly smeared-on his best charming smile. “Miss Calendar! I was just –”

“Manhandling a fellow student?” she finished with deceptive mildness, her eyes pointedly dropping to where Percy was holding Xander’s shirt. “Barely a month before the start of basketball season? Y’know, it’d be an absolute shame if you got cut from the team because of something as silly as, oh I don’t know, a disciplinary issue?”

Percy followed her gaze. He took her meaning. And slowly, reluctantly, he let his grip slacken and drop. “We’re gonna finish this later, Harris.”

“No, Percy, it’s finished now,” she told him, with a nasty-sweet smile. “Let me guess: you heard about Martinique and got attacked by the Good Idea Fairy? Clearly you didn’t hear that the Mayor chose who’s going. And if he finds out someone was trying to bench one of his picks... well, the School Board is only a phone-call away! And the competition for athletic scholarships is so fierce.”

Give him credit, Percy actually tried to hold his ground for a few more seconds... but under Miss Calendar’s steady regard, he eventually turned and slunk away.

“Xander, are you all right?” the teacher asked, giving him a sympathetic look.

Oh, I’m just great, Miss! Getting my ass kicked is one thing, but at least nobody’s gonna say I can’t take it like a man. Getting rescued by a teacher? A female teacher? Jeez, why don’t’cha just skip the middleman and make me come to school in a dress for the rest of the year? Xander plastered on his best self-deprecating grin and straightened his clothes, long-honed skills letting him show nothing of his thoughts. “Please! After that time Rodney Munsen beat me up every day for five years? Percy is small-time.”

She held his gaze for a moment longer, then visibly chose not to push. “Well, a couple of people from the school newspaper want to meet with all of us out in the Quad at morning break for a group photo. Snyder’s making them do an article on the trip, so he can take credit for it.” She rolled her eyes, then glanced from the vending machine to the half-roll of quarters still in his hand. “And don’t forget to eat something before you go to study hall, okay? You can’t concentrate if you’re hungry.”

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Sunnydale High School,
12:33 (lunch period), Tuesday, October 7, 1997

Willow turned away from the hand-dryer – and yipped in alarm as she almost ran into another girl. “H-harmony! Hi! W-when did you come in? What d’you want?”

The blonde’s ‘smile’ reminded Willow of nothing so much as a shark spying a school of tuna. She tipped her head to Gwen Ditchik, silently telling her to guard the door, before carefully checking each of the toilet stalls and turning back to Willow. “Thought we should have some girl-talk. Just you and me.”

“A-a-about what?”

“Mostly? Hot French guys in Speedos, and how much they’d be wasted on you.” The shark-smile did not shrink one bit. “You remember how my Dad works with the town planning office, right? Well, it’s the weirdest thing, but somehow, someone keeps breaking into their computer-system to go through all their blueprints and stuff. Sewer maps, layouts for service tunnel networks, that sort of thing. Same with the coroner’s office, which is really icky if you ask me.”

Willow gulped. Not good. “Oh. Gee. Th-th-that’s, that’s too bad.”

“I know, right? What with hacking being a Federal offence, and all?” Harmony leaned in a little. “Wouldn’t it just be a shame if someone at this school got arrested for it? I mean, a straight-A record doesn’t get anybody out from under Federal charges. Even if they didn’t end up doing actual prison-time for it, the whole thing would set them back years in their education, and the big colleges? Yale, Harvard, MIT, all those guys – they could never touch anybody with that kind of record. They’d be as good as radioactive.”

“B-b-b-but accusations aren’t proof!” the redhead tried.

Harmony shrugged that off. “The Feds would still have to investigate, though, and that takes months. The hacker would be investigated, their family and friends would be investigated... Snyder’s just itching for an excuse to expel some of the people here, and that’d be handing it to him like an Oscar envelope!” She leaned in just a little closer, putting her mouth almost to Willow’s ear. “And all they’d need to get all this started is just a name, or a hacker-handle. Like, maybe... ‘Scarlet Succubus’?”

Willow went clammy-cold all over.

After a long, long moment just staring directly into Willow’s wide, terrified eyes, Harmony pulled back again. “See? Isn’t it nice to have some real girl-talk?” she asked, her shark-smirk approaching peak smugness. “Now, what you tell the school is up to you, but let’s be clear, OK? I’m going to Martinique with Cordelia, not you. Y’know why? Because if I don’t go to Club Med... you go to Club Fed. Got it?

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AN: Because Harmony Kendall strikes me as one of those people who isn’t quite as dumb as she acts... but is dumber than she actually realises.

 

Following on from this snippet of Distance and Perspective. Sunnydale’s pest problems get worse, and Wesley highlights how Harmony really isn’t suited to fighting battles of wits....

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Bric & Broc (abandoned factory/vampire lair),
12:52, Tuesday, October 7, 1997

“Teachers have been naughty, and now the students are caning them,” Drusilla murmured in her usual dreamy fashion, fiddling with one of her dolls. “Young Turks, and White Russians, and little wingless birds who stuck their long noses where they shouldn’t, and now it’s all topsy-turvy. All those plump cats, so upset at being thrown out of their warm beds.”

Well, that came out of nowhere! Her paramour reflected ruefully, looking up from the TV. That’s the problem with loving a Seer; they might be able to trace all these wider patterns of Reality, but good bloody luck getting ’em to focus on how it relates to here-and-now. Nonetheless, he muted the TV before crossing to Drusilla’s side and resting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “What is it, Pet? What’s happenin’?”

“The pebbles took a vote, and now the avalanche has started,” she frowned. “But not all the pebbles wanted to go down the hillside, and one of them’s come bouncing to our door. Ooh, she’s all angry and cruel, Spike!”

“I like her already,” he grinned. “Any idea –?”

clong clong clong

‘William the Bloody’ snapped his bleached-blond head around, peering intently at the factory’s main entrance. “See what that’s about,” he told the sentry-vampire – today it was Dalton, the least moronic of the band they’d seized from The Annoying One. “And don’t get a bloody sunburn doing it, either!”

When the door opened, however, there was no-one outside – just a padded catalogue-size envelope sitting on the footpath. Dalton brought it to him with a puzzled expression; the address-panel bore only the word {SPIKE} in marker-pen.

“Open it,” he ordered, backing up a step or two. No knowing what they put inside, and let’s not find out the hard way!

Duly tearing open the flap, Dalton poured the envelope’s contents onto a table. All that lay within was a cell-phone and charger-unit, with a Post-It stuck to the front saying {1 PM}.

Somebody likes playing games, then. I’d had enough of that bollocks even before those bloody Pikeys jammed Angelus’ soul back into him, Spike judged sourly, glancing at the clock on the wall. Two minutes to show-time, then. They’d better keep it short – buggered if I’m going to miss The Bold and the Beautiful over this!

At the stroke of one, the phone started ringing, and Spike punched the blue {YES} key before it finished the second bar. “Funny. You do know Dracula’s a poser and a wanker, right?”

{“I’d say ‘spoken like an expert on being both’, but starting our association with snide little insults isn’t going to help either of us get what we’re after.”}

She’s British, she’s posh, and she’s probably got a double-barrelled name. And doesn’t that narrow down who and what she might be? “Might be fun, though.”

{“You’ve attained quite a bit of notoriety by killing two Slayers, William. Would you rather bandy words, or secure help in completing your hat-trick?”}

“Who says I need help, luv?”

{“You may not. Drusilla, on the other hand?”}

Spike’s face shifted with the sudden ripple of fury that provoked, and his demon snarled into the handset. “What. Do. You. Want. Bitch?”

{“I just told you: I want to help you kill your third Slayer. And her entire little entourage of heretics, misfits, and morons, to boot.”}

“And what does a Watcher get out of helping me kill a Slayer and another Watcher?”

There was an outright smirk behind her next words. {“And who says I’m a Watcher?”}

“The thousand-quid accent, and knowing who, what, and where I am? All pretty good clues.”

{“Oh, you’d be surprised by how little those things narrow the field of candidates,”} she purred. {“But as to my motives? Revenge. Vindication. Other things, that are none of your concern just yet. Once Buffy Summers and her troupe are all properly removed from play, we’ll both have free hands to pursue our aims here in Sunnydale, and perhaps even to assist each other in achieving them. In the meantime, consider the free mobile phone a sign of good faith – it’s registered to a shell company, and the service plan is paid up to the end of next September. Do keep it close... but don’t bother trying to call me back. Unless I’ve scheduled another call, you’ll get nothing but a ‘disconnected’ message.” *bip*}

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Sunnydale High School,
15:02, Tuesday, October 7, 1997

“— going to do, Buffy?” Willow had spent the entire afternoon stewing on Harmony’s threat, and by the point she and Buffy finally walked into the library and could talk freely, she was almost vibrating with anxiety. “I-I-I can’t go to jail, I can’t not get into college! I, we needed to know those things for your Slaying, but nobody’s gonna believe why I did it or even ask in the first place and what are my parents gonna say if the Secret Service questions them and –”

Giles looked up from where he was sorting books behind the counter. “Dare I ask what’s happened now?”

“Harmony decided she wants in on this trip thing. Says she knows who Willow is in the hacker world, and that she’ll rat her out to the Secret Service if Will doesn’t let her swap places with her.” Buffy’s expression bared a lot of teeth. “Giles: do the Watchers have any rules against Slaying people for being galactically selfish harpies?”

“U-unfortunately, yes,” he said, turning troubled eyes on Willow. “I-I, uh, I’m afraid I’m at a loss.”

“I’d suggest giving her Wellington’s answer: ‘publish and be damned’.” Wesley had been shelving, and now descended from the stacks level with an air of faint amusement.

Willow goggled at him. “B-b-but she said she’ll go to the Feds!” she squeaked.

“And if she’s actually that foolish, she’ll be lucky if they simply pat her on the head, say ‘that’s nice, dear’, and chivvy her out the door,” he shrugged. “Miss Rosenberg, the cybercrime units of the California Bureau of Investigation and of the United States Secret Service are already very much aware of your activities as the ‘Scarlet Succubus’... and they have you filed as a ‘white hat’ hacker.”

“W-w-wait. They do?”

“Oh, yes,” he nodded, with an easy, reassuring smile. “Your, uh, early experiments in the on-line world brought you to their attention, and while professional caution demands that they keep an eye on you, they’ve also been apprised of your involvement in resolving the matter of Moloch. With that as conclusive proof of your being on the side of the angels, I don’t see them taking any sort of clearly malicious report with any kind of good humour – especially not once they get a quiet heads-up from myself or Miss Calendar. This may be a degree of, ah, low cunning you didn’t quite anticipate from Miss Kendall, but if she thinks that setting law-enforcement on you over a school trip is going to get her anywhere, she’s about to learn that she’s nowhere near as bright as she thinks she is.”

Buffy gave him a long, incredulous look, then shook her head, trying to wrap her brain around what she’d just heard. “Harmony, ‘thinks she’s bright’? Those are words I never thought I’d hear together!”

Giles, on the other hand, was levelling hard eyes at the new Watcher. “The Council’s already handled this? Without telling me?”

Wesley blinked. “I thought –” He broke off and shook his head ruefully. “No, that’s a foolish thing to say; I know full well how patchy our communications can get, so that shouldn’t be such a surprise. On the other hand, that you’ve been placing so much reliance on Miss Rosenberg’s computer-skills without confirming they weren’t going to bring the authorities down on your heads? That’s disappointing, to say the least. I should’ve thought a man with your chequered history would be more attuned to potential issues with the plod.”

Wait: Giles has a ‘chequered history’? Buffy’s eyebrows shot for the ceiling, and Willow outright boggled at the older Watcher. “Okay, we’re missing something, here,” the Slayer judged. “And I can’t wait to hear this.”

Giles glared imminent death at his younger colleague. After a few moments, Wesley made a conceding gesture and shrugged one shoulder to their charges. “While many people regard their youth as a time of mistakes, your Mister Giles managed to earn a certain notoriety. And the most lurid legends die the hardest, especially in our community. Beyond that, it’s not my story to tell.”



[[[AN: And this is about where Xander and Miss Calendar walk in, with him giving her a certain degree of cold shoulder, and Wesley takes him aside to impart a bit of friendly advice.]]]

 

95 Vigor-Brown Street
Napier, New Zealand
07:03, Friday June 3, 1994

A callused hand was on Yukio’s shoulder, shaking her firmly. “–kio! Hey, Yukio! Better get a move on!”

“Mmm?” The Japanese girl blinked her eyes open and looked up into a face-coloured blur. “Nani?”

“Shower’s free, you’ve got twenty minutes. Right tap’s cold water, left one is hot, but I can’t promise how much hot water there is, so you might want to be quick! Uniform’s laid out for you; you might want to throw on some tights, it’s a little cool this morning. We’ve only got crumpets for breakfast, hope it’s OK!” Taz told her, then was gone.

In her host’s sudden absence, the rest of the world started filtering in, and the sound of the TV, voices, and occasional nine-year-old giggles registered. Yukio sat up – apparently, during the night Taz had turned her to lay flat along the bed and put a duvet over her – and fumbled for her glasses on the bedstand, giving her brain time to spin up to operating speed.

Striking the temperature in the two-tap shower took a little fiddling, but that was the only complication to her morning routine, despite the chatter from the kitchen and living-room. When she emerged, the twins were watching cartoons while Taz wiped down the dining table. She was already in her full uniform, though today the blazer had given way to a V-neck scarlet wool jersey, complete with white edging at the cuffs and collar and the St. George’s crest embroidered on the chest. “Feeling better?” the redhead smiled sidelong.

“A little, yes. Where is Danny?”

“His Dad picked him up half an hour ago, on his way home from the airport.” Taz waved a hand to the north-west as she slipped past Yukio into the kitchen. “He goes to Central, a couple of klicks that way, and they start earlier than St. George’s. Finish sooner, too, which is why he can watch the twins for us.” A moment later, she reappeared at the serve-over and laid down two plates of steaming, buttered pastries. “Katya, Kolya: come and get it, kids!”

So summoned, the children scampered over to claim their plates, and the attendant glasses of milk, and sat down at the table to eat.

“And your mother?”

“Just left. With the long weekend coming, she’s helping the owner double-check their inventory before they open.” The toaster popped, and a few moments later two more plates appeared on the serve-over. “Could you take those over to the table, please?”

As Yukio was setting the plates down, Taz returned with mugs of tea for each of them. Seeing her guest note the state of her own drink with a raised eyebrow, the taller girl gave her a crooked smile. “You took milk and one sugar last night. If that’s wrong –?”

Yukio shook her head, no it’s fine, but was silently a little impressed. She made note of something as minor as that, even with everything else that happened last night? Taking her seat, the Japanese girl murmured “Itadakimasu!” and began eating.

“What does that mean, anyway?” Kolya wanted to know between bites.

“‘I am about to partake’,” Taz supplied patiently, reaching for a damp facecloth to wipe stray butter from her nephew’s chin. “You know how some Christians say Grace? Same thing. And don’t talk while you’re eating – you know better.”

Yukio quashed a smile at the quasi-maternal chiding. As they all ate, her eyes were going about the room, seeing signs that she’d missed last night. The faded wallpaper and carpet, scrupulously clean but still ragged or worn-through in places. A television and VCR that had been brand-new last decade and seen hard use in the meantime. The battered Arcoroc cups and plates, scratched almost white-grey in places, matched with stainless-steel flatware showing numerous scars and dings. Even the twins’ clothing, patched at elbows and knees and visibly mended or frayed in multiple other spots.

And now, with less than two days’ warning, this home must also support a surprise guest for the next two weeks. One who will have a noticeable impact on their budget – including their intention to make special efforts to find, purchase, and learn to prepare her accustomed foods and drinks, if Misha-sempai’s comments last night about trying to find o-cha were sincere.

I am not sure I will be calling ‘Mister’ Grantham ‘sensei’ very often during my time here, she judged firmly, her lips thinning in anger.

Out on the street, a vehicle – a large one, probably a four-wheel drive – pulled away, and a hair’s-breadth of tension seemed to leave Taz as she finished her tea. “That’ll be the new bodyguard taking Mister Marjanović off to Ahuriri,” she noted to Yukio, setting down her empty mug. “At least he’s got a long weekend ahead of him – he’ll appreciate the extra time to get organised. Once he gets done with ‘meeting the team’ tonight.”

Yukio arched an eyebrow, and Taz mimed draining a glass. Ah, so ka. New Zealand men do their ‘team bonding’ in drinking sessions, like Nihonjin sararimen. Alcohol seems to be a universal language, she noted dryly.

With breakfast done, Taz shooed the twins off to watch cartoons – today it seemed to be X-men – while she dealt with the dishes. When she came back into the living room, she was wearing a speculative expression. “Shower’s running next door – Zakkiyah must be awake.” After a moment, she grinned evilly, winked at her guest, and picked up the phone, dialling quickly.

What is she...? Yukio wondered.

After a moment, the Chicagoan must have picked up. “G’morning, Zed,” Taz smirked into the receiver. “Hey, d’you know the water’s running over at your place? I could hear it from my kitchen.”

Even across the room, Yukio could hear the other girl slam the receiver back into the cradle, and a muffled shout of “You asshole!” came from across the driveway.

Taz set the phone back down, turning to Yukio with a look of wounded innocence. “I was only trying to be helpful!” she protested.

Yukio bit her cheek to stifle her giggles.

 

A moment later, Misha came through the front door without knocking, like Taz in the full ‘sweater’-version of his uniform, schoolbag slung over one shoulder. (Yukio noted that he’d removed both the frame and the sword-sheath attached thereto, for self-evident reasons.) “’Morning, all!” he waved, stealing a kiss from Taz. “Back to the daily grind, eh?”

“Something like that,” Taz nodded. “I finished my novel-report. D’you mind double-checking it?”

He blinked, then shrugged. “You’re a week ahead of the due date, but okay: give us a look.”

As Taz ducked down the corridor, Yukio gave Misha a curious look. “Where is Mister Pryce?”

“Left him at Cerian’s place.” He snorted a laugh, then added dryly, “I let him get one glance at our backlog of after-action reports, and his eyes glazed over. I left him to it. A Watcher with fifteen months of catch-up reading to do? Snug as a bug in a rug.”

“Whatever keeps him out of our way.” Taz came back with her own bag in hand, producing the folder she’d been working in the previous night and offering it to her boyfriend. “I’d rather not be tripping over Poms every time I turn around. Tommy Tarakan is bad enough.”

“Pryce might not be all bad, even excluding last night,” Misha noted, sitting at the table to read. “I caught him getting dressed earlier? Interesting tattoo on his left forearm: a Fairbairn-Sykes dagger with a scroll across it, reading ‘Per Mare, Per Terram’.”

“Bullshit!” Taz blurted, her eyes widening. “A Watcher candidate was Royal?”

“That’s what he said,” he noted, not looking up from his reading. “Just finished his four, apparently. As he put it, ‘enlisted in early ’89, went straight to Belfast with 45 Commando’” (he pronounced it ‘Four-Five’, in what Yukio would later learn was the ‘approved fashion’) “‘Operation HAVEN with “Forty Support”, just de-mobbed after some time in Belize’.”

Taz sat down next to him, bursting into laughter that, to Yukio’s ear, had a faint (but unsettling) note of incredulous hysteria to it. “No wonder he’s actually got half a clue! We’ve been out here screaming for help, and instead of the Watchers sending us some Classroom Commando, the Allfather decides what we need is a random appearance by a British desantnik!? Next thing you know, ‘Aunt’ Sofia’s gonna stop by again!”

“I’d take that, y’know,” he said softly, glancing up at her with a complicated little smile. “I mean, as a last desperate chance and all that, she’s not exactly subtle in her methods, but she makes shit happen.”

“Subtlety –”

“‘– is overrated’, I know, I know,” he finished indulgently; it sounded like an old refrain between them. “But we live in this town, and she’d flatten the place if she thought she had to.” He finished his reading and passed the assignment back to her. “Looks pretty good to me.”

“Says the bloke who just finished a sentence with a preposition,” she drawled. That earned her an old-fashioned look, which she met with a saucy wink. “Question is, ‘will Grantham accept it?’”

“If he doesn’t, he’d better have a bloody good reason,” was the shrugged answer. “D’you think he realised what he was in for, assigning you that novel from the ‘free reading’ box?”

That got him a snort of derisive laughter as the Slayer tucked the folder back into her schoolbag. “Probably didn’t even look at the cover. It’s his funeral.”

“Oh, my heart pumps custard for him.”

Yukio blinked at that turn of phrase, but its sardonic tone was sufficient translation for the moment. She was just framing a remark when the back door opened and closed very vigorously, and angry feet stomped down the corridor. Zakkiyah appeared in the doorway behind Taz, dressed in a Cardinal-red hoodie over black jeans, scowling at the taller girl’s back. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a fuckin’ asshole?”

“If you keep talking like that, I might start wondering if you were doing more in that shower than just getting clean,” Taz said blandly, winking at Yukio.

A fresh wave of colour ran up the blonde’s face. “Adje u kurac, drolja!”

Taz turned a questioning expression to Misha, who’d coloured a little himself at that, and he ruefully translated, “More or less? ‘Poshol na khuy, blyad’.”

“Don’t try to insult me by telling me to have a good time, Zak,” the redhead chuckled, glancing over her shoulder to give her new neighbour an apologetic expression. “It was a joke – you can get me back later. Woke you up, though, eh?”

“Ah, fuck you,” Zakkiyah said, but it was half-hearted. “Yous guys are about ready ta head in, den?”

“Pretty much,” Misha confirmed. “Once X-men finishes over there, off go the twins, and so do we.”

Taz cocked her head. “Is it my imagination, or is your accent just a liiiittle thicker this morning?”

“Yous already told me I’m not gonna blend in, so I might as well stand out, right?”

Misha gave her a slightly amused sidelong look. “If you say so.”

The blare of electric guitars announced the closing credits of the twins’ cartoon, and dutifully the two nine-year-olds shut off the TV and climbed off the couch; Taz and Misha moved to meet them, kneeling to hug them in turn. “See you at lunch-time, Aunt Taz!” Kolya offered.

“We’ll be good for Danny until you get back,” Katya assured her.

“Make sure you do. I love you both,” Taz said fondly.

“Now, 'mšī,” Misha added gently. “See you this afternoon.”

As the two children reached the front door, Katya slowed and glanced back at Taz. “Aunt Taz, the baddie from that show, Apocalypse. He smacked over Wolverine pretty hard. D’you reckon you could beat him?”

That drew a derisive snort. “He picked the wrong name if he wants to win against a Slayer, Ekaterina,” was the easy response.

When the door had closed again, Zakkiyah turned an arch look on their host. “Arrogant, much?”

Misha shook his head, looking deeply tired, and reached for his bag again. “It’s something Andrushka taught us – anxiety is contagious, but so is composure. If we don’t sound worried, they don’t worry, so we don’t stress out over them stressing out.”

“Fake it to make it, huh?”

“Something like that. Yukio, you ready to go?”

“Hai, sempai.”

“... that whole thing about ‘please don’t throw titles at us’ is going to take a lot of work, isn’t it?” Taz noted dryly.

Yukio didn’t quite quash her smile. “Hai, sempai.”

Visibly caught between growling at being zinged and simply laughing, Taz threw up her hands and swung on her bag. “OK, let’s get moving.”

And as he locked the front door behind them, Misha smirked and started singing softly. “‘I owe, I owe, so off to work I go....’”

– – – – – – –​

They’d only made it to the footpath when Zakkiyah’s stomach let out a very audible growl. She blushed a little under their glances. “I missed dinner last night, remember? And nobody remembered to stock our place before we arrived,” she grumbled. “Dad left me a coupl’a fins, so I can hit a Seven-Eleven or somethin’.”

Misha flicked his head towards the south. “Will a dairy do?”

Zakkiyah followed the gesture with her eyes, spotted the small shop on the corner, and shrugged. Dat looks more like a ‘convenience store’ ta me.... “We’ll see. Won’t slow us down too much, will it?”

“It shouldn’t; they don’t open the school gates until half-eight anyway, and Tutor Group runs until just before nine.”

They lock the school gates? Well, I suppose it’s somethin’ youse guys got in common with us. The Chicagoan shook her head a little as they walked, then switched topics. “Speakin’ of our place not bein’ ready, I think da TV’s busted. Like, before Dad left, we turned it on and there was nothin’ but static, and when I tried again just before my shower, I could only get, like, three channels.”

“... yyeeeeaah?” Taz said slowly, giving her a sidelong look. “That’s all there is to get, at the moment. They only start transmitting around six-thirty, and they shut off just after midnight, or so.”

“Three channels.” The blonde knew her voice was dull, but it was that or scream in horror. “Six a.m. to midnight. That’s it!?”

“Well, if your Dad can afford the subscription, I’m told Sky TV’s going to expand their coverage down to Hawke’s Bay before the end of the year,” Misha offered kindly.

That earned him a skeptical look. You’re tryin’ ta help, I gotta give ya dat. But it ain’t workin’ da way you want. “Yeah, and how many more channels will dat get me?”

“Movies, News, and Sport,” he counted off on his fingers. “Oh, and Discovery, but that splits its time with Trackside, so unless you’re big on live race-coverage of horses or greyhounds, you probably won’t be watching much of that during the day.”

“Dat’s the full cable package out here? Four more channels!?” It took effort not to screech that!

“With a lot of American content,” he went on, still valiantly trying to reassure her. “The News channel’s basically CNN straight-off-the-satellite for eighteen hours of the day – they give it over to the BBC from midnight to six – and Sky Sport’s got a deal with ESPN. If you’re home in the afternoon, you’ll be able to watch whatever live game the major leagues have scheduled for the US prime-time slots: NFL, hockey, baseball, basketball....”

Hell. I’m in Hell! Zakkiyah judged, dread sitting in her stomach like a stone. The town’s full of monsters, the cops are actively on their side, and if dey don’t kill me, I’m just gonna die of fuckin’ boredom!

Coming into the ‘dairy’ – which did, indeed, turn out to be a small convenience-store, no matter what these hillbillies called it – didn’t make things much better. There was a stand of newspapers and magazines and occasion-cards, fridges for milk and pop – including the comfortingly-familiar liveries of the Coca-Cola range, thank God, something she recognised! – racks of bread and pastries, shelves of potato-chips and candies and chocolate bars... but almost all of it brands she’d never even heard of! No Snickers or Twinkies or Ho-ho’s... there was a warmer on one part of the counter, but no hot-dogs or pizza-slices, just a bunch of sallow-looking flaky-pastries of various shapes and sizes.

God, Dad, couldn’t we have moved in late July? Jenna and Rachel were all set ta go ta da Taste with me! She noted bitterly, not-quite-seeing the contents of the warmer she was scowling at. What I wouldn’t give for a good Maxwell Polish right now....

A hand waved a twelve-ounce bottle of Sprite in front of her face. “Is this OK?” Misha asked.

“... yeah, I guess,” she conceded eventually. At least with dat, I know what da hell I’m gettin’! “What da hell am I even lookin’ at? I don’t recognise anythin’!”

He arched his scarred eyebrow at the whining undercurrent in her tone, but left it alone in favour of pointing things out with the bottled beverage. “Like the stick-on labels say: up top, you’ve got sausage rolls and savouries – basically, bite-sized pies of various kinds. Lower down, you’ve got the full-sized pies, filled with what they say - steak, steak-and-cheese, mince, mince-and-cheese, bacon-and-egg, and so forth. I can’t swear any of it is halal, though.”

“Whatever.”

“An idea?” he posed, nodding to another display filled with cakes and slices. “We can talk you through the intricacies of the Kiwi pie later. For now, just grab a slice of Sally Lunn instead, or a couple of doughnuts.”

“Sally Lunn?” Does everything here have some kind’a weird name?

“The one with the coconut icing. It’s sweet, spiced, got raisins in it.”

“Sounds like I could do worse,” she shrugged, reaching for the tongs to grab her selection and slide it into one of the provided brown paper bags.

“… I’m starting to detect a certain lack of ‘zippedy-doo’ about someone’s ‘do-dah day’,” he noted blandly.

She gave him a distinctly foul look, snatched her lemonade from him with her free hand, and shouldered past him to set both food and drink on the counter before the clerk.

“(G’day, Rajinder.)” Misha nodded to the clerk as he rang up her purchase. “Look, Zakkiyah, can I make a suggestion?”

“Nobody says I’m gonna take it.”

“I’m getting that impression,” he nodded patiently. “Look, after living in a Big Smoke like Chicago your whole life, I know that Napier, and New Zealand, are kind of a let-down, and there’s been some, ah, shocks along the way, cultural and otherwise. But... you haven’t even been here a full day, yet. At least finish getting off the plane before you decide you hate it here. It’s not all bad, all right? Try to give it a chance? Give us a chance?”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” You really expect me to believe there’s an up-side to all this? I ain’t buyin’ it – not until a pair of droids come wandering out of the wilderness carrying a message from Princess Leia! At least Luke Skywalker could dream of getting out to the Academy. I’m stuck here!

He took a long breath, then let it out slowly. “Some days, you just have to take what you can get,” he reminded himself.

 

I’m coming to think that my plans for There is No Depression In New Zealand are... somewhat too ambitious, particularly for a tale simply meant to introduce readers to (my take on) Buffy’s predecessor as Slayer. Using Yukio Washimine as a viewpoint on my OCs lets me do certain things, and technically slide the story into the category of Black Lagoon crossover, but there’s just too much there, and too much baggage, and I just need something a little simpler. More of a standalone Monster of the Week episode, rather than trying to cover six episodes’ worth of plot and characters in one fic.
So, I’m backing up a little to a more straightforward, more self-contained concept, tentative working title Valhalla Can Wait. As a side-benefit, it’ll also let me throw in some of Buffy’s signature thematic musings and ‘reflections on teenaged life’, which I was... not overly focused on in my other BtVS works, perhaps to the detriment of their Buffyverse ‘feel’.
Hell, I even have a decent ‘teaser’ intro-scene, very much inspired by Moloch’s initial binding in I Robot, You Jane.

– – – – – – –
– – – – – – –
– – – – – – –​

Tory Island, Tirconnell (now Donegal, Ireland)
23 March, 794 AD

The monastery was in flames. Slain monks lay scattered within the grounds, their free-flowing wound-dew soaking into the grass. Their killers, blond-bearded men with keen axes and stout round shields, were returning to their ship. All were relaxed and jovial, laughing to each other about their ‘victory’ over the Christians, laden heavy with gold crosses and other pillage taken from the ‘hallowed grounds’.

At their head, Steinbjørn Erling Toroldson was as flush as any of his men. Craggy of face and build, spear in one hand and a small keg of ale under the other, he was an imposing figure even to his men. Especially with the red-ale of Christians still splashed on his face and brynja, dripping from the nose of his helmet.

And yet, when he saw the figure standing under the dragonhead-prow of his ship, even this mighty drengr stopped short. She was small, pale of skin, with a river of dark hair running back over her shoulders. Clad only a simple black cloak, open shoulder-wide to show she was bare of foot and body beneath, she stood empty-handed, no possible threat to any warrior, much less one in full armour... and yet, Steinbjørn’s hackles rose at the sight of her, and in that instant he almost stumbled in coming to a halt.

Behind him, his men slowly gathered, each man coming to a halt on the edges of the growing throng, their banter dying out as each beheld this woman, this slight-framed girl, standing before them, regarding the band of fifteen warriors with an expression of... mild curiosity? A hint of distaste?

„Who are you, to stand between me and my ship?“ Steinbjørn demanded. It was unlikely this Saxon maid understood the tongue of the Norse, yet it was the only one at his command.

„You have done bloody work here, today.“ Her speech was perfect enough to jolt him, startling him into a fiery glare, then yet she remained unperturbed. „You have slain those who did no harm, who performed no act of malice, who worked only to provide for their neighbours.“

„Are we not their neighbours?“ scoffed Torger, from two paces behind his chieftain. This had been his first raid, and once the killing was done, he’d drunk deep of looted ale ere they left the burning priest-camp. Now, he hefted a small chest in his left hand, letting all hear the clink of the coins within. „Surely, they’ve provided for us! And if they lived on this island, forsaken even by our Gods much less their own, they should be grateful that we sent them on to their Heaven!“

The girl’s gaze turned to him. Flat, empty, lifeless as any sea-wolf’s.

There was a clap of soundless thunder, a dazzling flash of lightning of all colours and of none.

When it cleared, Torger’s ill-gotten chest of coins lay on the beach, amid a few wisps of smoke. Of Torger, there was no other sign.

None dared disturb the silence that followed. These were stoic men born of hard times, men who knew that the Gods despised any who showed fear in the face of death... but in the face of magic, of such incredible and casual power, each man tried not to breathe too loud.

After long, long moments, when each man heard only the blood pounding in his ears, the girl eventually spoke. „You came as murderers and bandits and ravagers, to slay the defenceless and loot their corpses and despoil their sanctuary. You have slaughtered and plundered those whom I accepted into my domain, took as my people, placed under my protection.“ She considered them all for another few moments... then stepped aside, clearing the path to the ship.

Steinbjørn peered at her closely. „You say we have done all this, and yet you would let us go?“

She gave him a wisp of a smile, and that was almost more chilling than Torger’s fate. „And where would you go, Steinbjørn Toroldson? For now do I pronounce your doom. Steinbjørn the Covetous, I proclaim you – coward, thief, murderer. You and your ship will wander the whale-roads forever more, unable to spend the plunder you have seized. You will never again see the Northlands, taste its meat or mead, its bread or beer. Only on this day, once every hundred years, will you be able to set foot on land again, and you will never see your Gods or their Halls. Your time in this world shall end only if you are slain ashore, in honest battle, against stout-hearted warriors – and well do I know, that is the one thing you will never seek.

„To your men, I give a choice.“ She raised one hand, pointing to the setting sun. „Any among you who are still on this island when the sun touches the sea may renounce their Gods and their warrior’s life, replace those they slew, and make weregeld by returning their plunder and devoting their lives to the service of others. They will make yonder monastery their new home, its faith their own, its works their life’s calling, never again taking up axe or shield save in defence of this island and its people.

„But any of you who choose to take ship with Steinbjørn the Covetous today will be bound to his doom.“

As she spoke her last word, she blurred, seemed to shrink. A moment later, where a girl of fifteen years had stood, a crow was perched on the bow-ornament of their karvi. Then, with a flicking flutter of feathers, the bird took wing and soared for the open skies above.

 

A ficlet/scene from a (possible?) future installment in the Controlled Circumstances continuity, inspired by this portion of the shamelessly B-movie-derived indie game Age of Barbarians: Extended Cut. Poor Yukio Washimine has found herself trapped in a video-game, more specifically in the mind of an escaped slave in a swords-and-sorcery milieu. As the above video shows, Sheyna, the game’s heroine (and now Yukio’s semi-accepting host) has just happened across another helpless soul and rescued him from a dreadful fate....

---

Sheyna lowered her sword and looked over the small creature before her, trussed up and dangling over the sacrificial pit like a worm on a fish-hook. She’d seen pictures of his like, back in her old life. Back before her father sold her to a sorcerer, in the empty hope of saving his kingdom. Before she’d spent years enslaved to the man who murdered her father and sacked her homeland.

“Thank you thank you thank you!” the little fellow babbled pathetically. “Oh, truly fortunate I am, that the Goddess herself comes to my rescue!”

He was barely four feet tall, with a yard-long rat-like tail, pointed ears, and a face dominated by a baboon-style muzzle; his hairless pale skin was covered only by a brown leather hood over his neck and shoulders, and a pouch-like garment of leather about his waist. But at the moment, I am in no position to criticise his modesty! Sheyna noted ruefully, again conscious that the river Zorn had stripped her lush body of all but the bronze manacles encircling her wrists and ankles and the gold chain-of-discs hanging low on her hips.

A ‘nezumi-jin’, here!? Yukio-thoughts asked her, sounding a little wild-eyed. Where I am from, rat-men are remembered mostly from a legend that warned the powerful of the consequences that come with breaking a promise.

Perhaps that is true in your land, Sheyna noted to her mind-guest, a little dryly. Here, we have another name for them, and a different reputation. “You’re a stragh, aren’t you?” she asked, already knowing the answer. “My tutors once told me about your kind. Thieves, they warned me: a race of sneaks and pilferers! What misdeed brought you here, little one?”

He cringed, mustering a sheepish smile as he slowly twisted at the rope’s end. “... It’s all a misunderstanding, Goddess, I swear.”

Despite herself, Sheyna smiled crookedly. “You think me a ‘Goddess’?” That’s actually kind of adorable. “And what is your name, then?”

“I am Starn!” he said. “I beg you, Goddess, free me! I will be forever grateful —”

Her fresh-found arming-sword was already swinging. The corded hemp suspending the rat-man parted like a cornstalk before the razor-keen Atlantean blade, and ‘Starn’ dropped the last foot to the floor. He landed lightly, balanced on the balls of his feet; both Sheyna and Yukio-thought recognised that poise instantly, and both were intrigued. For all Sheyna’s declarations of thievery and underhandedness, the little one had the bearing of a trained warrior.

“Oh, thank you thank you!” he fawned. “Oh, how lucky I am! I will follow you, I will serve you faithfully —”

“You will stay away, if you have any sense,” Sheyna returned. “I go to do massacre, little one, and the path I walk is of blood and vengeance.”

The sycophantic babble broke off, and Starn drew himself straight, meeting her eyes with a great show of dignity. “That is a dreadful path, even for a Goddess. I cannot let you walk it alone.”

“... I was a slave too long to deny another his choices,” Sheyna conceded eventually. “But for all that I just saved your life, know that I cannot promise you any kind of safety from here on, Starn of the Stragh.”

“You saved my life; I can repay that only by spending it in your service, Goddess,” he returned earnestly. “And as you said, the stragh are known for their stealth and resourcefulness.”

And so Sheyna, once Princess of Kemth, finds her first new retainer and armsman, noted her Yukio-thoughts. Though he seems more suited to being ninja than samurai.

I would need peace to dream of building a new life, let alone a demesne, and I cannot have that until Nekron’s head comes off his neck, Sheyna returned, a little harshly. I was no older than you are now when that sorcerer had my father speared in his own throne-room and razed my city and destroyed everything I had ever known! Then the vile creature spent years enjoying my misery as he made me bear his cup and ‘warm his bed’ and ‘entertain his guests’. Until he dies, I will not know true rest!

Yukio had no answer to that.

“Please, let me lead the way,” Starn continued, knowing naught of the silent conversation. “My eyes are better-suited to the darkness in this place, and I remember the turns those brutes took to bring me here.”

As they moved on, Starn taking the lead by a step or two, Sheyna kept half an eye on her new liegeman. Starn’s footing was sure and light, and even in the near-black of this forgotten underground temple, where the ravages of time had left the paving-stones uneven in many places, he seemed to have little trouble finding his way; clearly his claim about his vision was no lie. He was quieter, too; her own breath and the soft pad of her bare soles against the stones seemed almost deafening in the otherwise-silent corridors, but she could hear nothing from him.

After three turns and taking them up a flight of stairs, Starn stopped and raised a hand, motioning for quiet. Stopping at his side, Sheyna crouched and looked ahead. Ten paces ahead, the far end of the passage bent downwards into another stairway — and light was reflecting on its ceiling. A torch at its foot, then. His captors, my pursuers, or both? “How many, do you think?” she asked, barely above a breath.

He motioned for quiet and cocked his head, listening intently.

“— Mukko must be feeling generous,” came faintly from ahead. “I mean, we were going to take turns with her anyway, for making us search for her like this, but giving us permission to use Her Highness and leave her for the carrion-hawks?”

“If the slut’s not dead when we find her, she’ll wish that she died in the fall, soon enough,” another man groused, this one with the trudging slap of leather sandals; the torch-light bobbed and shifted as he ascended the stairs. “What Mukko wants back is that gold chain he put about her waist! After three years with Nekron, she’s neither virgin nor princess, so the chain is probably worth twice what she’d sell for in Shem’s flesh-markets.”

“Quiet, damn you both!” snapped a third voice, and the torch stopped moving for a moment. “If she is still alive and lost in all these tunnels, she won’t stumble into us if she can hear you two chattering from halfway to Anam!”

Starn nodded. “These three are the ones who caught me, not so long ago,” he breathed.

“Wait here,” Sheyna told him, her dark eyes lighting up. And so the first of them come to pay the price for their arrogance. She quickly ran over her memory of how Mukko armed his guards. Shields and belly-guards; the desert heat makes anything more unbearable to wear for long, and Mukko is too miserly to buy helmets. They would’ve left their spears outside, they’re too long for these tunnels, so it’s my sword against their axes, and the lead man must have the torch in his shield-hand. With the bend in the tunnel, they won’t see me coming until I’m under their guards.

The torch-bearer had resumed his climb as she was thinking, and she was moving forward before she realised it. The head of the torch appeared over the lip of the stairs —

Four steps.

— then the man’s greasy hair —

Three.

— then his face —

Two.

— his eyes widened —

— then Sheyna was level with him, hearing the rattling breath and feeling the splash of blood gouting from a neck no longer capped by a head. Like his companion, the next slaver had time to see her, but no more, before a yard of Atlantean mithral slipped between axe and shield to drive six inches deep in his heart. Even as he started to topple backwards, the third man, the last one, the cautious one, was able to fling up his shield against her lunge for his face — against a feint. A deft twist of arm and wrist instead drove the blade deep into his upper thigh, severing the great artery.

Even as her third victim squawled and staggered, Sheyna absently caught the falling torch in her free hand just as it touched the ground, holding it up to survey her work. Best make sure of this last one. A short, flicking slash, almost faster than the eye could track, laid open one side of the slaver’s throat, and she watched him slide down the wall into the spreading pool of his own blood with absolutely no emotion in her heart or her eyes. “Starn? It’s over.”

The stragh came up in a patter of claw-toed feet, taking in the carnage with awe-widened eyes. “Goddess, indeed,” he breathed. “For is not Ishtar the goddess both of love and of war?” With that, he began searching her first victim, digging through his hip-satchel to retrieve first a sheathed steel dirk sized for a stragh hand, then a pouch filled with small but keen-edged iron throwing-stars. “These are mine, pig,” he told the headless corpse coldly.

For her part, Sheyna carefully considered which of the men was closest to her height and build, then wedged the torch into one dead man’s armpit so she could begin unbuckling another’s hemithorakion and the layered leather guard that covered his right arm and shoulder. Their chitons are all too ruined to wear, she judged, nose wrinkling at the mixed stench of coppery blood and voided bowels, but I can still use their armour. She also retrieved the man’s satchel, taking all of use or value from the other two dead men. “How much further to the outside, Starn?”

He thought for a moment. “Another... hundred paces, Goddess,” he judged. “I don’t know how many more will be between us and the exit.”

“Not enough, Starn,” she assured him, with a wolfish smile. “Not nearly enough.”

 

“Your discretion is appreciated,” Giles smiled tightly. “If a touch belated.”

Further discussion along that line was forestalled by Xander’s arrival, and Wesley set the last book he’d been holding on the counter. “Mister Harris –”

“Hey, Wes, it’s ‘Xander’, OK?” the teen broke in. “‘Mister Harris’ is my Dad.”

“I see.” Wesley gave him an understanding nod, even as Jenny came through the door behind him. “Your arrival is well-timed, Miss Calendar: I was hoping to ask a favour of you.”

“Oh?”

“In all the rush to get here, I, uh,” he winced ruefully “overlooked the need to obtain my California driver’s licence, and although the team-mate who’s been driving for me left the car and keys with me, they themselves are preoccupied for the next couple of hours. I was hoping you might give me a lift over to Xander’s house, so we can deal with this permission-slip business.”

“Sure.” She flicked a glance to Xander, who didn’t quite meet her eyes. “That okay with you, Xander?”

“Actually, it might be best if Xander stays here,” Wesley cut in, shooting the boy an apologetic look. “As I said yesterday, I’m going to be framing my arguments to appeal to his father’s attitudes, and after Miss Chase’s little ‘revelation’, I’m... not sure that’s a conversation Xander will care to hear.”

“Thanks, Wes. I think I’ll sit this one out,” Xander nodded feelingly, digging into his bag for the form in question (which was already a little crumpled) and handing it to the Englishman. “I dunno how you’re gonna pull it off, but what I don’t witness, I can’t be made to testify about.”

– – – – – – –​

2451 Campos Verdes Way, Sunnydale
15:53, Tuesday, October 7, 1997

Even after the long and somewhat disconcerting conversation they’d had in the privacy afforded to them by the drive over here, Jenny had to admit: she’d seen some well-run snow-jobs in her time, and Wesley had gotten off to a good start. Simply seeing a well-dressed Englishman getting out of the back seat of a two-tone Mercedes 500E after being chauffeured across town had clearly already set a certain impression in the mind of Tony Harris, and Wesley was leaning into that hard.

“— with the Ætheling Circle, a... private educational trust, let’s call it, that has branches all over the world,” he was saying smoothly, playing up his accent. If he was at all bothered by the way Tony Harris was trying his best to crush his knuckles in one beefy paw, it didn’t show.

After a few moments, Tony grunted and released the handshake, waving his guests into the living room. “So what brings you here, Mister ‘Private Educational Trust’?”

“Has Xander spoken to you about the upcoming trip to Martinique?”

“Yeah,” the elder Harris shrugged, nodding his guests into seats. Wesley took the second armchair, silently motioning Jenny towards the couch, as Harris went to the fridge for a fresh beer and sat down in his own armchair. A small forest of empties had already grown on the floor to one side, and Tony drained a third of his fresh bottle before turning slightly reddened eyes on his guests. “Don’t really see the point – it’s not like the kid’s gonna need to know French when he’s flippin’ burgers.”

Jenny had to bite down hard on her response to that, and she was a little surprised to see Wesley actually blink and take a deep breath in similar fashion. “Are you also aware of the incident at Parent-Teacher Night?”

“We couldn’t make it, so I only know what we heard later. Somethin’ about a bunch of gangbangers getting’ whacked up with angel-dust and tearin’ up the high school?” Tony shrugged again.

“Yes. And it may surprise you to learn that your son, and some of his friends, were instrumental in resolving the situation with a minimum of bloodshed. In the process, he demonstrated courage, cool-headedness, and quick thinking under severe stress – qualities that would stand him in good stead in later life, especially with my employers. Mister Giles also works with us on occasion, and he forwarded Xander’s name for our attention. Which is where we come to the Martinique business.”

“Really?” Tony’s eyes narrowed. “How’s that?”

“The Ætheling Circle has operations all over the world, Mister Harris. We’re mostly concerned with identifying and supporting young people with extraordinary talents and helping them achieve their full potential, through scholarships, personalised training and mentorship programs, one-on-one tutoring and counselling at need, things of that nature. Doing that here in the First World can be straightforward, but sometimes it isn’t. Moreover, our work does often take us to less... settled parts of the globe. While Xander doesn’t meet the criteria for our primary programme, he does possess the kinds of qualities we prize in our field-representatives and their personal security officers.” Wesley smiled crookedly. “To be quite honest, we’re considering offering Xander and several of his friends... what you might call ‘apprenticeships’ with us, and Martinique is something of a ‘sale pitch’, letting us showcase some of the, ah, perks of joining our organisation.”

“Yeah? And those are?”

“A career above the service industry, for a start; the work certainly can be dangerous at times, but it’s also challenging and worthwhile. There are also, uh, other benefits. I understand you were once in the US Navy?”

Tony twitched at that, taking a swig from his beer to blunt the pain of that raw nerve being probed. “Six years, before they canned me. Hell, I’m lucky I didn’t wind up in Leavenworth! My Chief at Sigonella was in bed with the local Mafia, working a black-market scam in gas and tyres. All I did was shuffle papers and drive trucks for the guy, but when the Carabinieri caught him, shit rolled downhill.”

“Believe me, I’m more than familiar with that phenomenon,” Wesley chuckled, unbuttoning the cuffs of his left sleeve. When he peeled them back, Jenny did a double-take at seeing the – tattoo!? – on his forearm: a dagger, with a scroll laid across its pommel that read { Per Mare, Per Terram }. “Royal Marines, myself. My first posting out of Lympstone was going straight across the water to Belfast with Four-Five Commando. I made lance-jack in my last year; I’d’ve happily done more than just four-and-out if my family hadn’t leaned on the Corps to make me come home and ‘fulfil my obligations’.”

“Wait a minute: an accent like that, a high-falutin’ family with that kind of push – and you were an enlisted man?”

“I got the same reaction from almost everyone I met: a bloke like me, posh accent, double-barrelled name... carrying a rifle like some private-school oik? They didn’t know what to make of me, either. Even from the first, the recruiters wanted to put pips on my shoulders, like every other toff who comes to them out of Oxford. I had to be rather insistent on the point that giving a snot-nosed student like me a commission and a platoon-command wouldn’t serve either my goals or the best needs of the Corps.”

Tony considered him for a long moment, then dredged up a crooked smile and a not-terrible Clint Eastwood impression. “‘You’re a good man, Lance-Corporal. A good man always knows his limitations.’”

“Exactly!” A rueful expression, then Wesley moved back on-topic. “My point is that in your overseas service, you found that foreign countries have different legal environments, and that can have... advantages.” A tip of the head at the bottle in Tony’s hand. “For instance, here in America, drinking ages range from eighteen to twenty-one, on the basis that only adults can be trusted to treat alcohol responsibly. In France – including Martinique – the attitude is that the best way to encourage teenagers to act like adults is by treating them as adults, including access to adult privileges, and letting them learn their own limitations from there. On this trip, if Xander chooses, he would be free to walk into a bottle-store in Fort-de-France and buy beer or wine of up to five percent ABV, and the shopkeeper wouldn’t even bat an eye. He’d need to be eighteen to buy anything more robust, but if someone else were to provide spirits, there’s no restriction on consumption, especially in a private residence.”

That earned him a skeptical snort. “Real man’s a drinker, yeah, but the kid’s never shown any interest in gettin’ blasted before. Why would he do it out there?”

“Over the years, I imagine that within his hearing, you’ve lamented the early end of your Navy career because the law said you ran afoul of it. Perhaps he’s exercising an over-abundance of caution? He may prove more willing if the law is on his side.”

“Huh.” The elder Harris actually stopped and thought about that.

Wesley’s thin smile now took on a slightly leering note. “For that matter, while the California age of consent is eighteen, and the sex-ed program at Sunnydale High is firmly based in abstinence, in France the legal age is fifteen, and both education and enforcement are approached from a more pragmatic standpoint. While I don’t know much about Xander’s love-life up to now, nor do I particularly care to, it’s entirely possible he harbours excess concern for the consequences of ‘fishing for jailbait’, particularly in a town where gossip travels quickly. Far from the sight of prying eyes and wagging tongues, in a more permissive environment, he may feel less... self-conscious about ‘completing his education’.”

Tony’s gaze flicked to Jenny. “Aren’t you gonna be one of his chaperones?”

Meaning, “won’t it be your job to cock-block these kids?” Jenny silently translated, feeling a little slimy. “I am... but you have to give kids room to make their own choices, and sometimes their own mistakes. Giles is a little more stiff, but” she leaned forward a little and plastered on her best salacious smirk “I think I can keep him distracted while we’re down there.”

“Oh, honey, I bet you could,” Tony grinned, his eyes lingering on how her posture had lowered her blouse’s neckline an inch or two. “And if you finally get the kid laid, more power to ya. He’s been passin’ up what that Rosenberg skank’s been offerin’ for the last ten years – if it wasn’t for that stash of porn he and his buddy Jesse got their hands on, I’d’a started worryin’ if he’s queer.”

Wesley shrugged, letting that concern pass. “Still, my point is that we’d like to offer Xander an apprenticeship with the Ætheling Circle, and hopefully show him what we can offer him in return for his own strengths and talents. Trust me when I say, after sampling those offerings, he’s not likely to return from Martinique as the same lad who left.”

A semi-derisive snort answered that claim. “Almost sounds like the same thing the Navy recruiter told me.” After a long moment, though, Tony finished his beer and added the slain soldier to the honour-guard beside his armchair. “But, hey, it gets him outta my hair for a couple of weeks, and it starts makin’ a real man of him? Sounds like a good deal. Where’s that form I need to sign?”

– – – – – – –​

Neither Wesley nor Jenny trusted themselves to speak before they got into the car again. As Jenny put the keys in the ignition, she met her passenger’s gaze in the rear-view mirror. “Did we really just sell Xander’s Dad on permitting this trip... by convincing him it was going to be effectively unsupervised? That we’d be turning four teenagers loose in a foreign country for two weeks of sand, surf, sex, and shots?”

“And the more depressing part is: it worked. Makes you feel like you need a shower, doesn’t it?” he noted sourly, opening a silver case to retrieve and light a Cohiba cigarillo. “Though it does lend weight to the ‘sadistic bastard’ theory.”

“Don’t get me started, Wes.”

– – – – – – –
– – – – – – –
– – – – – – –​

 

247 Martindale Drive (Calendar residence)
18:53, Tuesday, October 7, 1997

{ “At a White House press conference earlier today, President Gary Nance officially declared that the last American combat forces have been withdrawn from New Zealand, where paramilitary forces loyal to a corporate oligarch attempted to overthrow the government in May of last year,” } Peter Jennings told his viewers, over footage of camouflaged vehicles and men boarding ships under bright, sunny skies. { “Since the surrender of the last rebel holdouts almost three months ago, U.S. and other Coalition forces have been assisting domestic and international agencies with reconstruction and relief efforts in the South Pacific nation. Now, with government services and infrastructure mostly restored across a nation once ravaged by both civil war and the bizarre weather phenomena that complicated the fighting, President Nance said, ‘The people of New Zealand have fought long and hard to regain control of their own country. We were only ever a helping hand to that end, and now that our help is no longer needed, we are overjoyed to see New Zealand reassert its own institutions and governance.’

{ “Some commentators continue to criticise the President’s decision to intervene in the South Pacific nation, saying that New Zealand had abrogated all U.S. responsibility for its defence when it closed its territorial waters to all nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships in 1987, causing friction with the US Navy’s neither-confirm-nor-deny policy of the time. CNN contributor Pat Buchanan went so far as to say on-air that the campaign, spearheaded by the Marines of the 25^th Marine Expeditionary Unit and eventually involving forces from twelve nations, was ‘nothing but a cynical ploy to distract from domestic blunders like the dissolution of the ATF and DEA’. Senate Majority Leader John McCain himself was quick to respond to the claim, calling it ‘The worst kind of wrongheaded ignorance, and a fundamental betrayal of every U.S. serviceman who participated in this proud feat of arms.’” }

– – – – – – –
– – – – – – –
– – – – – – –​

AN: a little world-building, partly to reinforce that this is an alternate history but also to set up Things for later. Being out in NZ, I didn’t get to see much of Jennings’ reporting, especially once we got CNN — to those who might have seen more of his work, is this consistent with his style?
(No-Prizes await those who can spot the other property referenced in the above snippet without resorting to Google.)

 

When they got back to the school, a stern blonde woman was waiting just outside. Lean-framed, in her early thirties, with the unmistakeable bearing of paramilitary training, she was wearing a loose black leather jacket over a white polo-shirt and sharply-creased black trousers... and as she crossed to meet the car, Jenny caught a glimpse of a big silver pistol holstered on one hip under the jacket.

As Wesley disembarked, he greeted the woman with a nod and a smile. “Hullo again, Raven!”

“Sir.” The nod was returned crisply. Looking past Wesley for a moment, she turned a politely-professional smile of her own on Jenny and offered one hand, the other lifting her wrap-around Oakley sunglasses to reveal dark-blue eyes with genuine warmth glinting in them. “Charlene Higgens. Thanks for covering for me.”

“Jenny Calendar. No problem,” the teacher assured her over their handshake. The older woman’s grip was notably calloused – almost certainly the product of long hours handling weapons – but its firmness was carefully measured. “Wesley and I needed a little time to talk, anyway.”

“So I understand, ma’am,” ‘Raven’ noted, bland humour twisting one side of her smile for a moment. “Shall I take it from here? Buzz is waiting inside.”

“Yeah, I think Wes and I covered everything for today,” Jenny chuckled, dropping the Mercedes keys in the blonde’s hand. “Nice to meet you!”

As Jenny headed inside to get her things, Wesley arched a brow at his colleague. “So how did the job-interview go?”

A disgusted look and a hrmph preceded a proper answer. “Sunnydale PD has been the biggest joke in California law enforcement since before I entered the Academy. And now I have a clue why.”

“That bad, hmm?”

“After the North Hollywood thing in February, every department in the country has been screaming for people with weapons skills and tactical training. An applicant with twelve years in LAPD, six of them as a SWAT sniper? Sir, by all rights, they should’ve been offering me a blank check, and all I got was... yawns.”

“That is curious. And when you implied you had experience dealing with ‘suspects on PCP’? A skill-set even more in demand amongst SWAT teams and their ilk world-wide?”

Raven met his gaze steadily. “As soon as I started to raise the idea... they couldn’t get me out the door fast enough.”

“Indeed.” Wesley mused on that for a long moment. “I believe our younger colleagues would say, ‘something weird is going on’....”

– – – – – – –​

For all the humour she’d shown Raven, Jenny had broken into a near-run the instant she got inside. After hours or not, who the hell thought it was a good idea to let Buzz into a school full of impressionable young minds!? Gods and heavens, I hope it’s not too late!

She near-skidded back down to a walk again just short of the library door, took a moment to try to reassert her composure – and brace for the worst – then pushed the doors open.

Louisa Garneau was sitting on the counter, a pack of Lucky Strikes in one hand and an unlit smoke dangling from her lips, giving Giles a glare that spoke of imminent murder as she yanked her head back to evade his hand snatching for the cigarette. “Try that again and you lose an arm, Limey!”

“I’ll do whatever I have to in order to keep you from bringing open flames so close to my books,” he returned stiffly, a hint of temper creeping into his flat gaze. Beyond him, Willow was sitting at the central table, computer and study-books forgotten in alarm as the situation developed. “If you want to poison yourself outside, that’s your choice, but California’s smoking laws aside, I will not have this library go the way of Alexandria because you could find no better cure for boredom than a nicotine fix!”

Buzz met him glare-for-glare for a long, long, long moment... then slowly smiled and returned the cigarette to its packet. “So you’re not just a spineless bookworm? Good. Can’t have Jenny winding up with a wimp.”

“Nothing comes of that but boots to the head,” Jenny inserted dryly, quickly inserting herself into the little tableau. “I didn’t figure you for the Cheesehead Inquisition, Buzz.”

“Someone’s gotta do it, and your Dad’s kind’a busy winning drag contests,” the other woman grinned. She slipped down off the counter and unashamedly bear-hugged the new arrival. “Good to see you again, Jenny.”

“You, too, Lou. I don’t think we slept much during the Bihać thing,” Jenny noted, with a little effort. Is she trying to crack my ribs? Damn, she’s really been working out since I last saw her! Linda Hamilton wishes she’d had this kind of steel-cable physique when she was doing the Terminator sequel. Buzz was slightly taller and barely a year younger than herself, but choice and chance had led to the cousins’ lives taking far different courses – as the shoulder-holstered pistol between Louisa’s white blouse and black denim outerwear amply attested.

Buzz released her and stepped back, making a dismissive noise. “Yeah, it was amazing just how fast and far we made the Serbs back off once people would actually let us get weapons,” she noted with disgust. “It’s not like UNPROFOR was actually a force that could provide real protection, or anything.”

Jenny flicked a moment’s glance at Rupert, who was observing all this with an arched brow. I need to pick my words carefully. This would be so much easier without the idiotic power-games being played in the background.... “Louisa, uh, spent some time in Bosnia during the wars.”

“She means, I came out of college with a shiny new photojournalism degree and, being a naïve little idiot like most college kids, went into the Pocket actually thinking a Nikon gave me the power to make things better for people there.” Another scoffing noise. “In the end, I didn’t start making a real difference until I picked up a weapon.”

“I... see,” Giles managed, eventually and rather dubiously.

I’m not sure you do, Rupert. Straight-laced, sober-sided Watcher your whole life? Something tells me you don’t realise how much dirty work goes into this profession of ours. Jenny shook off the thought.

The library doors swung open again, and Buzz’s hand was halfway to her sidearm before she saw the newcomers and stopped herself. Cheerleading practice had just ended, and Cordelia and Harmony had stopped by. (Even with three adults in the room, Willow froze, like a mouse hypnotised by a cobra.) Cordelia parted ways with the blonde, heading into the stacks with Giles in search of a book. As they went, Harmony glanced across Jenny and Buzz, visibly dismissed them all as unimportant, and sauntered over to the central table, shark-smirking at Willow. “Hey, there, Willow. Had a chance to think about what I said?”

“Uhhh... y-y-yeah,” the redhead nodded, almost convulsively.

“... And?”

«What’s going on?» Buzz murmured to her cousin.

Thanks a lot, Lou. Do you know how long it’s been since I spoke Croatian? Jenny noted dryly, trying to find the right words. «She wants to go to Martinique in Willow’s place.»

«Fuck that!» Buzz bristled at the very thought, and when she addressed the cheerleader, her voice was very, very dangerous. “Fuck off, blondie! You have no idea what’s going on.”

“Lou, don’t,” Jenny said quietly, setting a hand on her cousin’s arm. When the taller woman glanced at her, Jenny warned her off with a shake of her head. Willow’s got this under control, her eyes said silently, and prayed she wasn’t mistaken.

Harmony ignored the byplay behind her and cocked her head. “I’m waiting, Rosenberg.”

Willow turned desperate eyes on Jenny, silently pleading for intervention. For a moment, the teacher considered speaking, even drew breath... then reconsidered, and confined herself to a silent nod and a steady look. We’ll back you up, Willow, but you can handle this alone. You’re stronger than you realise. Beside her, Buzz glared daggers at Harmony’s back and gave the redhead her own confident smirk.

Near-panic flickered across the girl’s face, then she turned her gaze back to Harmony. After a long moment, she took a deep, steadying breath, her jaw setting as she jerked her head at Buzz. “Y-y-yeah, I-I’ve thought about it. A-a-and I like her answer: ‘F-Fuck off, blondie! You have no idea what’s going on.’”

Harmony’s jaw dropped so hard and fast, Jenny was surprised she didn’t bruise her chin on the tabletop. “Ex-cuse you? You know what’s gonna happen –”

Willow had clearly screwed up even more courage than she realised, because she actually dared interrupt the blonde bully, surging out of her seat and facing her with fists clenched by her sides. “Yeah, I do! And I only wish I could be there when they laugh in your face! ‘Publish and be damned’, Harmony, now f-fuck off and let me get back to doing something important!”

Harmony just stood there, slack-jawed and blinking, utterly lost for words.

HarmonyKendall.exe has encountered a fatal error and closed down, Jenny noted dryly. Good grief, she never even considered that Willow might actually say ‘no’, did she?

“Harmony, what’s going on?” Cordelia and Giles had returned from the stacks, and now the head cheerleader was frowning down at her minion from the landing.

“Y-your brain-dead lackey over there t-tried to blackmail me into giving her my seat on the trip,” Willow shrugged, her voice still hot. “I-I told her to grab her vibrator and b-buzz off, instead.”

Giles went a little pink. For her part, Cordy actually ha-ed a near-laugh. “Wow! Who knew Willow Rosenberg could actually be so brave – or so crude?” That said, she turned hard eyes on said minion. “Harmony? Explain.”

“W-what?” the blonde stammered incredulously. “Y-you’re taking her side?”

“It’s all I’ve heard, so far. Again: explain.”

“You... it’s going to be nothing but these freaks on that plane with you! I thought you’d want an actual friend along –”

That earned her the patented Cordelia Chase thousand-watt ‘you-have-screwed-up-now!’ smile. “Harmony, if a thought ever actually went through your head, it’d be the fastest trip in North America.”

Harmony’s jaw dropped again, and she simply stood there, gaping at the head of the Cordettes, baffled, betrayed.

“Go home, Harmony. We can talk about this later.”

As the blonde near-staggered back out of the library, almost in a daze, Cordelia and Giles headed to the counter to get her book issued, while Jenny and Buzz both approached Willow, who’d gone from angry-flushed to near-hyperventilating almost as soon as Harmony’s back was turned. Jenny slipped one arm around her young charge’s shoulders, both to steady her and reassure her. “That must’ve felt good,” she grinned.

“Y-y-yeah, it did,” the redhead stammered, a little wonderingly. “B-b-but why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I’m not always gonna be there, Willow,” Jenny said gently. “If you fight a girl’s battle for her, you protect her for a day. If you teach her that she can fight her own battles, you protect her for a lifetime.”

“Besides, scratch a bully, and you find a coward,” Buzz snorted contemptuously. “In the Bihać Pocket? The Serbs were really fuckin’ ‘brave’ about dropping shells on unarmed civvies and troops who couldn’t even find rifles, but the instant we actually got the firepower to fight back? Those chickenshits took off running and didn’t stop until they got to Banja Luka.”

– – – – – – –
– – – – – – –
– – – – – – –​

 

[Continued from here]

– – – – – – –​

St. George’s Academy
Napier, New Zealand
11:31, Friday, 18 March, 1994

“Miss Zyrianova, this is almost routine by now. I’m starting to think I need to permanently reserve a seat for you outside my office!” Deputy Headmaster Barry Gordon was wearing an expression of deep exasperation.

For her part, Taz had experienced Mister Gordon’s patented Daunting Glare too many times for it to be fully effective, even when she wasn’t fully content with the righteousness of her conduct, so she met it steadily. (Well, more-or-less.) Next to her, Mama was equally calm.

On the other side of the room, Friedrich Fehrmann was shooting Taz the kind of wild-eyed looks one would expect from a boy trapped in a room with a rogue tiger. In all fairness, those looks were coming from behind the tape over his broken nose and the cotton-wool stuffing both nostrils and eyes already blackening very bloody nicely, thank you very much, as well as the blood still drying on his collar and shirt-front. (The school nurse doing good work, fast, was probably inevitable after the amount of practice Taz had sent their way in the last couple of years.) Next to him, Petra Fehrmann was doing her best to indignantly glare both Zyrianova women to death for the insult and assault rendered unto her precious little darling.

“What else was I supposed to do, Sir? He did grab a handful of my arse, and there are a dozen witnesses who’ll swear to it,” Taz shrugged unrepentantly. “Immediate consequences are the best way to curb stupidity like that.”

“You have no sense of humour!” Mrs. Fehrmann declared stiffly, her voice thick with the Ostdeustcher accent of Dresden. “When I was your age, a boy feeling up your arsch was a compliment.”

“And in this day and age, Mrs Fehrmann, it’s called sexual assault,” Gordon snapped, turning that basilisk gaze on her. “The next time Friedrich lays hands on a fellow student in that fashion on school property or on school time, he’ll have to explain his actions to a police officer. And they can’t take a joke as well as I can.”

“My father is with Stormhawk Security – he is the police!” protested the highly-congested Friedrich.

“No. He. Is. Not.” Gordon enunciated clearly. “I don’t care how much of a big-shot he used to be with the East German Volkspolizei, I don’t care for the uniform he wears, and I certainly don’t care for him carrying a machine-carbine on the streets of my country. Here in New Zealand, your father is nothing but a security guard. Stormhawk Security has no mandate or legal authority to investigate, arrest, or interrogate, and they – and you – are just as subject to the laws of New Zealand as any other person in the country. Which means you, Friedrich, are going to have to learn how to accept ‘No!’ as an answer.”

“B-but what about her!?” the boy continued, pointing at Taz. “She threatened to stab me!”

Seeing Gordon’s gaze swinging back onto her, Taz raised a finger in respectful correction. “My exact words to him, Sir, were ‘Fuckwits like you are why my Babusya Daryna taught me how to use a knife when I was six.’ An observation, not a threat.”

Barry Gordon had only recently started wearing reading-glasses; this was his first chance to look at someone over them, and he made impressive work of it. “Semantics, Miss Zyrianova.”

“Misha likes to tell me ‘details do make a difference’, Sir.”

“Not as much as you or he seem to think, Miss Zyrianova,” he sighed, pausing to shed the glasses and massage his eyes for a moment before returning to his work. “Mister Fehrmann, you have grossly violated the School Rules regarding conduct, particularly that of treating fellow students with respect. You will serve in-school suspension every day next week, including being barred from all school-sponsored activities. While I cannot make any demands of your parents, I would recommend compounding your suspension with corresponding restrictions at home for the same period, to make the lesson stick.”

“But – but the Regional Championships are on Tuesday!” Friedrich sputtered.

“‘No school activities’, Mister Fehrmann – you’re barred from participating. The athletics team will just have to manage without you,” Gordon said frostily. “As Miss Zyrianova says, your conduct has consequences.”

“And so will mine, I expect,” Taz said evenly. “No matter what he did to me, I still belted him.”

“Just so, Miss Zyrianova,” Gordon nodded. “In light of the provocation you suffered, I must admit that your counter-assault on Mister Fehrmann was somewhat justifiable, but it was also excessive, and still an unacceptable breach of the rules against violence. Lunchtime detention, every day next week.”

Taz nodded respectfully. “Fair enough, Sir.”

“Mister Fehrmann, return to class. Mrs Fehrmann, thank you for coming. Please be aware that if Friedrich doesn’t show up for his suspension, his absence will be investigated, and any days of suspension he ‘misses’ owing to ‘illness’ or ‘family obligations’ will be made up at a later point. Miss Zyrianova, Mrs Zyrianova, please stay for a moment.”

“You might want to change your shirt and get that one soaking as soon as you can, Fred,” Taz suggested, as the two Dresdeners rose. “If you give that blood until the end of school to set, a normal wash will have a hard go of shifting the stains.”

All that earned her was another indignant glare from Petra, and a slightly baffled look from Friedrich.

I was only trying to be helpful, the Slayer shrugged to herself. Heaven knows I have enough practice dealing with bloodstained clothing.

Once the door closed behind the two former East Germans, Gordon turned that exasperated gaze on Taz again. “Miss Zyrianova, your propensity to react with your fists makes up far too much of my work-load.”

“Sir, if you’re going to tell me to just ‘grin and bear it’ when some randy fuck-knuckle puts his hand down my blouse or up my skirt –”

“That’s not what I mean, Miss Zyrianova, and you bloody well know it!”

“Tell that to Dahlia Everett. Sir.”

Gordon took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “That was before I took over as Deputy Headmaster (Pastoral), Miss Zyrianova, and you know it.”

“I do, Sir. Mister Vincent always struck me as more focused on protecting the school than the students. He may be gone, but that doesn’t change the fact that the school very carefully didn’t lift a finger against Dahlia’s attackers – alleged attackers” she correctly acidly “before she ‘disappeared’, and neither of those boys ever went in front of the police.”

“And yet, some would argue they received robust punishment nonetheless. I’d still like to know how William Reisma managed to get onto school grounds overnight – much less fall off the exact same section of the roof four times in the space of an hour.” Five months after his ‘misadventure’, the boy was still in a coma in Wellington Hospital; it was unlikely he would ever play rugby again, much less professionally as he’d once hoped. “But, we’re getting off-point. I don’t have any patience or sympathy for idiots who think they can get away with sexual harrassment, Miss Zyrianova, and unlike many other female students you have been... refreshingly firm... about ‘dealing’ with such incidents yourself, immediately and directly. The thing is, while on a personal level I applaud your willingness to stand up for yourself, in the eyes of many of the faculty, it’s left you looking like a hot-head who tries to solve all her problems with violence! Some of the staff are already making a case for expelling you, and every time you clobber a fellow student – regardless of how justified you might feel, or actually be! – all you do is hand those people more ammunition. I understand your... reluctance... to leave the enforcement of discipline in the hands of the school system, but it is our job. Let us do it. And work on your self-control, while you’re at it.”

I can guess the name of one of the ringleaders in the ‘expel her!’ faction! “Then bloody well do the job, Sir,” she challenged unwaveringly. “And let us students see you doing it. Because to most of us right now, you’re just another Mister Vincent, and the blokes with grabby hands think they can get away with whatever they like. Especially if they wear a First XV blazer, or their Dad wears Stormhawk black-and-tan.”

“There is another problem,” Elena Zyrianova added, reaching into her bag as she spoke for the first time since she’d come into the office. “The harassment of Tatyana is only going to increase over the next year or so. When I was going through today’s incoming shipments at ‘Peaches and Cream’, I found this.”

What now? Taz wanted to sigh... then blinked in bemusement as her mother laid a glossy magazine on Gordon’s desk. “Chyort voz’mi!”

Gordon stopped short himself, then slowly picked up the magazine and examined the cover closely, visibly comparing the face of the (topless) covergirl to the teenager sitting opposite his desk. “Bloody Nora,” he murmured. “The eyes are the wrong colour, the chin’s not quite right, the skin is too tanned, her hair too light... but otherwise the resemblance is... striking. Do you have an older sister, Miss Zyrianova?”

“No, she does not,” Elena said flatly. “She had three older brothers; the Soviet Union killed all three in 1986.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and actually meant it. He passed the magazine back to Elena. “I’m, ah, familiar with that imprint’s work, so I daren’t check the pictorials inside, but I presume the likeness is, ah, in more than just the face?”

“It is.” Elena tucked the magazine back into her bag and spread her hands helplessly. “It is not an exact match, but there is a close resemblance. And yes, the pictorial is as explicit as you would expect from that publisher, considering it features two young women and four men. There is a variant cover, in English, showing that woman’s face in close-up, but considering it is just as explicit as the shots within... well, I thought this one was sufficient to make the point.”

“Your discretion is appreciated,” Gordon said dryly. “So it seems your daughter has a doppelgänger in the, ah, ‘adult modelling’ profession. Do you know anything about her?”

“From little I can find out, her performing name is ‘Draghixa Laurent’; she is a naturalised Frenchwoman, born in what used to be Yugoslavia.” Anyone who felt inclined could watch the death-throes of that former nation on the nightly news, assuming they could keep track of all the moving parts. “She seems to have started performing only in the last few months. I have no idea how many shoots she has done so far, or how many she will do in future, but she appears in at least three titles that are already on our shelves at ‘Peaches’. The ‘tyranny of distance’* being what it is, I am certain there are more on the way.”

“Charming,” Taz huffed, massaging her own eyes with one hand. If they’re already in Mama’s inventory, the video-rental places and bookstores will be seeing them any day now. And since so many boys here – not to mention a fair few of the ‘adult’ males! – are basically walking stiffies with no brain-cells, they won’t see the differences between me and ‘Draghixa’, or they won’t care. Which means they’ll get even more grabby and insistent, either because they think that I’m her, or that I can be their surrogate for her!

This is exactly what I ‘needed’ to top off all the other bullshit going on in my life! She gave Gordon an apologetic look. “Honestly, Sir, I’ll do my utmost to restrain myself, but... if this goes the way I think it will, you might want to put my name on one of those chairs in the hallway, after all.”

Gordon met her gaze, and things that couldn’t be said aloud passed between them. Especially if a certain teacher gets in behind this and pushes as hard as he can.

Oh, he will – nothing surer, Sir. ‘Mister’ Grantham isn’t going to pass up an opportunity like this!

Just why is he so determined to nobble you, Miss Zyrianova?

Taz shrugged. If you ever figure that out, Sir, please, explain it to me! But we both know he is firmly fixed on driving my marks into the ground – within the guidelines, of course! – and he’d love to see me chucked out of this school. “Is that all, Sir?”

“For now. Elena, thank you for coming – again – and for bringing this ‘dopplegänger issue’ to my attention. I’ll do what I can to get out in front of it, but I can’t make any promises. And you need to get back to class, Miss Zyrianova.”

“Yes, Sir.” As she reached the doorway, Taz paused and glanced over her shoulder. “Sir, you do realise that Ernst Fehrmann was probably not in the Volkspolizei, right?”

“Indeed, Miss Zyrianova,” Both were morally certain that he’d been with the Grenztruppen, or possibly even the Stasi, before the Berlin Wall came down “but without proof, I can’t do anything about it. Besides, he’s a Stormhawk, now – he no longer has that degree of power.”

“Does he know that, Sir?”

“... Dismissed, Miss Zyrianova.”

– – – – – – –​

Author's Notes:​

* ‘Tyranny of distance’: a colourful phrase for how being so far from ‘civilisation’ in the UK/Europe helped set the early definition what it is to be an Australian or Kiwi, since technology, news, and other cultural influences took so long to reach the South Pacific. Can also refer directly to those delays in anything coming from ‘the Old World’ (or latterly, the US) to the Antipodes. The world of the 1990s didn’t have nearly as much logistical bandwidth as it does today; things like movies and print-magazines reaching NZ shores four, eight, sometimes twelve weeks behind their release dates at ‘home’ was... just how things worked.

 

[Time for a quick outtake, kind of my riff on the Buffy/Joyce conversation from Becoming. For context: Elena, Taz’s mother, has known about Taz being the Slayer from Day One, and is... far from completely enthused. Taz has convinced her to take her and her best-friend Misha on a road-trip to check out a bad-guy base. When they got there, they realised that Elena had arranged for them to stay at a naturist colony, then hid their Slaying gear (and all their clothes) in the hope that teenaged hormones would override their senses of duty and that they would become so ‘preoccupied’ they’d ‘forget’ they came here looking for (in her mind) a prime chance to get themselves killed. It worked [NSFW link], at least for several days, but then they got a reminder of their original purpose and asked Elena to return their kit. All of it. Elena did not react well....]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------​

“— Why do you want to die!?”

Taz stared at her mother, aghast. “‘Want to die’? Is that really what you think!? God, Mama, no, I don’t ‘want’ to die! I ‘want’ to take Misha back into that bedroom and spend the rest of our time here running more measurements on the sexual stamina of New Zealand teenagers!” She paused for half a heartbeat, letting her mother try to shift gears to capitalise on that ‘mistake’ — then ran her over. “But I also ‘want’ Papa to be lying in that other bedroom, waiting for you to come back in there so the two of you can get back to gathering the same data for the over-fifty demographic!

“I ‘want’ to get back to Napier after this trip and see what kind of antics the twins got up to while we were gone... but I also ‘want’ Pasha and Irina to be there, beaming proudly about how happy and healthy and smart and beautiful their kids are!

“I ‘want’ to sit around the dining-room table, picking out Sixth-form classes for next year that’ll help me get into the right Seventh-form classes in 1995, so I can get into the right University classes in 1996.... but I also ‘want’ Anatoliy to be there sitting with me, teasing me about which teachers and schools I need to avoid!

“I ‘want’ to spend my weekends relaxing and playing around or going tramping, instead of martial-arts training and weapons practice and tactical drills... but I also ‘want’ Vitaliy to have come home that evening in 1986, instead of getting eaten and ‘disappeared’ by some gribbly!

“I ‘want’....” She shrugged helplessly. “I ‘want’ to have been a fair bit older before someone stuck me with the responsibilities I have... but I also ‘want’ that fifteen-year-old fuckwit Yevgeniy Il’ych Krukhovskiy to have kept his dick in his pants that October evening, instead of making eight-year-old-me carve it off at the root with Babusya Daryna’s finnka and leave him to bleed out on our couch!”

She threw up her hands resignedly. “I ‘want’ a lot of things, Mama. But life isn’t about what I ‘want’. I learned that before I turned nine.”

 

A little bit of world-building, showcasing my spin on a canon character’s ‘origin story’ and what he was up to before we met him in canon to make him so different from the bloke we saw on-screen...

– – – – – – –​

Enlisted Mess, Price Barracks
Ladyville, Belize
07:31, Thursday, 17 March, 1994 Belize Time
[13:31, Thursday, 17 March, 1994 Zulu Time (GMT)/02:31, Friday, 18 March, 1994, NZ Time]

Hundreds of men were taking their breakfast, as they did every morning, and with DPM camouflage so favoured by all the forces involved, only by close attention to skin-tone, language, and the headgear tucked under their shoulder-straps could anyone distinguish between indigenous Belize Defence Force, British Royal Marines, and the ‘Cloggies’ of Whisky Company with their navy-blue berets. Amid the clatter of tableware and multilingual chatter, a Belize trooper wove amongst the tables in search of one particular man. Finally sighting his target, he stopped by the Englishman’s elbow.

Steve Wells glanced up from his plate with mild interest. Well, this is outside of the usual routine. I wonder what it presages? “What can I do for you, Guerra?”

“There is a civilian at the administration building asking to see you, Lance-Corporal. He says his name is Travers, and it’s about a family matter.”

“Travers? Oh, bloody lovely,” was the sour response. Sighing in aggravation, he hurriedly piled bacon and scrambled eggs onto a slice of toast, then stood, swung on his camo-tunic, drained his coffee-cup in one long draught, and retrieved his impromptu breakfast-to-go before giving Guerra a ‘lead-on’ motion. The other Royal Marines at his table exchanged smirks at his parting mutter: “First time this week the scran’s worth taking time on, too....”

– – – – – – –​

Guerra pointed Wells to the empty classroom where he’d temporarily stowed the visitor. Thanking the BDF man with a nod, then dismissing him back to his other duties with a jerk of his head, the Marine took a moment to breathe and brace himself, then opened the door. This is going to be ‘fun’....

Travers was much as Wells remembered him: overfed, slightly florid, balding, and dressed in a full three-piece tweed suit. Even this early, before the tropical heat truly began to build, sweat was already beading on his forehead.

He came all this way to talk to me face-to-face, and he thought it more important to ‘maintain appearances’ than to dress for the conditions? He hasn’t changed since I last saw him! Wells nodded a greeting to the older man. “What do you want, Uncle?”

“Not so much as a ‘good morning’? Your time amongst these uniformed Neaderthals clearly hasn’t improved your manners,” Travers noted sourly.

“But it has rather honed my sense of immediate priorities,” Wells returned bluntly. “We can stand here trading empty pleasantries and barbed comments until you collapse from heat exhaustion, or we can get to business and then move on with our respective days. So, once again: what do you want?”

“... so be it.” Travers grimaced in distaste as he lowered himself into a cheap plastic chair by one of the tables, then motioned for his nephew to take a seat opposite him. “I understand your time in the Marines has almost run its course.”

“Partly due to Council influence, I’m sure.” Wells allowed himself a saccharine smile. “It’s been made clear that if I sign a fresh contract, I’ll have to accept a commission and a transfer to an intelligence billet. Can’t have me bringing shame to the family name by not having pips on my shoulders, hmm?”

“Or by wasting an Oxford degree and fluency in multiple languages on carrying a rifle like some... common thug from the East End,” Travers agreed, with another grimace. “But that’s your father’s doing, not mine.” He dismissed the idea with a flick of his hand, then retrieved a pocket-square to mop the sweat from his brow. “There’s an ongoing situation involving the current Slayer. Taking an official interest would be... awkward, so when you leave the military, I need you to go out there and look into it, discreetly.”

“‘Situation’ doesn’t tell me much.”

“We don’t know very much,” Travers noted bitterly. “What I’m about to tell you was meant to be restricted purely to the High Council. If it got out to the larger membership, there would be the most hideous uproar.”

Council politics. Did it ever occur to you that I joined the Green Machine specifically to avoid getting dragged into that particular pit of sewage and vipers? Wells thought behind his best poker-face. “Indeed?”

Travers shot him a suspicious look, then cleared his throat. “Naturally, you’re aware that the Reformationists and the Progressives have been pushing for a revision of Slayer training standards for decades. About ten years ago, they managed to pry a concession out of the High Council: before we could revise standards, we needed to establish exactly how effective the current ones are. It was decided that we would conduct a... trial programme, to establish the necessary benchmarks. The key debate was over which factor makes Slayers more effective: our training programme, or the guidance of a Watcher. It was determined that three successive Slayers would be denied one or both of those factors, thereby measuring the impact of each on the length of their tenure.”

Only the better part of four years developing his professional bearing and composure kept Wells from leaping the table and dismembering the man on the spot. So you picked fifteen-year-old girls out of the crowd, threw them into battle against all the Armies of Hell and Forces of Darkness, but deliberately withheld vital preparation and support from them to see what effect it had on their lifespan? You cold-blooded bastards!

“The first candidate was Called this time last year. The expectation was that without training or a Watcher, her tenure would be only a few weeks, and we would all be free to move on to the more meaningful portions of the experiment.” Travers shifted uncomfortably. “No new Slayer has been Called since then, so we presume she’s still active, but beyond that... we don’t know anything.”

“Oh?”

“Her Watcher was injured the night she was Called, and we used her medical situation as a justification for removing her from the issue and assigning her to other duties. The Watcher’s son is a designated apprentice, and he was supposed to be sending us weekly reports. None have been received. We don’t know whether he’s simply not sending them, or there’s been some sort of breakdown in our communications. Sending any sort of official party to investigate the situation would be seen as an attempt to skew the results of the experiment —”

“— but I can go skeg things out quiet-like. And even if someone twigs, you can say to the High Council that it doesn’t count as interference by a Watcher since I am not, at this time, an active member of the Watcher’s Council,” Wells nodded, seeing where the old bastard was going.

“Precisely.”

Wells held his peace for a long, long moment, then cocked his head thoughtfully. “Just for the sake of argument... what if I were to say ‘no’?”

Travers smiled thinly. “I’m given to understand that your time in the Marines has been consistently above-average, if not exemplary. You have only what, six weeks left on your contract? It would be a shame to spend those weeks tied up in legal proceedings and getting a massive blot on your service-record because it came to light that you’d enlisted under false pretences... Wesley.”

You just couldn’t resist, could you? You could’ve appealed to my curiosity, my sense of duty, my dedication to the Council’s ideals... but no, you had to break out the strongarm tactics. And people wonder why I don’t often talk about my family. Again, none of this reached his expression. “Well, when you put it that way: who am I looking for, and where?”

“They operate out of Napier, New Zealand.” Travers produced a seven-by-five photograph — a surveillance picture taken with a telephoto lens, by the looks of it — and tossed it onto the table. “Burn that when you’re done with it.”

“I’m not a complete idiot, Uncle Quentin,” ‘Wells’ muttered sourly.

“And yet here you are,” the older man smirked. “I’ll find my own way out.”

Despite best efforts, the glare sent after him did not prompt Travers to spontaneously combust mid-step. Wells took a long, deep breath to reassert his composure, then picked up the photograph. It was a waist-up capture of two teenagers, caught on the street in school uniform, scarlet V-neck jerseys and ties over white shirts. The girl was the taller by half a head, lean and panther-sleek, her scarlet V-neck jersey and white blouse straining a little to contain what Wells’ Rodox-trained eyes judged to be a C-cup chest: she was roaring with laughter at something her companion had said, curly dark-auburn hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back, emerald-green eyes squinting in her mirth. The young man with her was also athletic of build, looking up at her with gentle amber eyes; she was ruffling his close-cropped blond hair with one hand, while he tolerated her ‘assault’ with the patient resignation of one long accustomed to such ‘indignities’. The hand-written note on the back said { 1993-02-25 TATYANA ALEKSEYEVNA ZYRIANOVA (15) PETER MICHAEL MCKELLAR (14) }

He took a long moment to memorise the faces and names, then drew a Cohiba and a lighter from his tunic pocket. It was the work of moments to light the cigarillo, then set the photograph alight. Thankfully, the classroom hadn’t been used so far that day, so there was no danger in dropping the burning picture into the rubbish-bin and leaving it to finish its combustion.

Sergeant Bardon was waiting outside the door when he emerged, and greeted him with an arched eyebrow. “Everything all right, Wells?”

“It was a family matter, but nothing urgent or tragic,” ‘Wells’ assured him. “With me coming up on ENDEX, Uncle Quentin wanted to make sure I was thinking of the family business when I started considering my next move. Apparently one of their bureaucratic pissing-matches has had real-world consequences, and they want me to take a look, see if I can fix things.”

“Are you gonna do it?”

“I was inclined to even before it was... made clear that complying would be in my better interests.”

Bardon grunted. “What do they say: you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family?”

“More’s the pity.”

– – – – – – –​

 

In which Misha has to give a bitch her pedigree:

– – – – – – –​

“Wizards” video parlour, Hastings Street
That same time

Misha took a deep, steadying breath, then gave Danny’s mother a steady look across the change-kiosk, trying to keep his temper under control. “I’m sorry; I don’t think I heard you correctly.”

“Oh, but you did, and that’s the problem,” Isabella Gulczyński smirked. “Danny’s already working more hours than you lot pay him for, looking after those two kids of yours, and that ends now. His rate per-hour is also going up, as of right now, to compensate for all that unpaid time he’s done for you. You used to pay him five dollars an hour, three hours a day, five days a week? Now you’re going to pay six dollars an hour for four hours a day, which is what he actually works when he’s at your place. I mean, I know he’s your friend, but he’s also your employee, and I have to look out for his interests,” she finished piously.

Jacking up the rates sixty percent on a baby-sitting contract between pay-periods, without any notice to look for alternatives? That’s not business, that’s a rort in progress! Misha straightened a little and looked his mate’s mother square in the eye – she wasn’t any taller than his own five-foot-four – and her eyes widened in alarm as the ‘small teenaged boy’ she’d been ready to bulldoze somehow seemed a lot bigger and more menacing, even though he hadn’t actually moved an inch. When he spoke, his voice was as still soft as ever by volume, but as a cold as a glacier and harder than steel. “Missus Gulczyński, I don’t know if you realise it or not, but getting to the bank to get Danny’s pay for this last fortnight? Almost got me my head blown off by a Stormhawk with a goddamn shotgun a few minutes ago,” he returned. “Compared to that, you’re not nearly as intimidating as you clearly think you are, so for starters, I would appreciate it if you would approach these ‘negotiations’ with just a little more fucking civility in your tone.”

Between his sudden looming presence and trying to credit what she’d just heard, Isabella was still trying to catch up with the state of play. “N-Now listen here –”

Misha ran her over. “Even if Danny wasn’t being paid, he’d spend most of his time at our place anyway. Your husband sleeps days and works nights at the control tower at the Airport. You spend most of your time trying to keep this place staffed and afloat. And your mother, the Frill-neck Lizard, can’t accept the fact that she doesn’t live in Italy anymore and keeps trying to turn Danny into a loud and pious Italian Catholic kid, rather than a quiet, bookish Aussie expat living in New Zealand who doesn’t give a damn about the Roman Catholic Church.”

“‘Frill-neck Lizard’?” Isabella sniffed, finally getting her feet under her for an instant. “You’ve been talking to my husband.”

“When was the last time you did?” Misha noted stonily. “So, here’s the counter-offer: Danny’s pay is going to stay at fifteen dollars a night, just like it currently is. Any ‘increase’ beyond that, you can write off as the cost of us providing his dinner five nights a week. Considering we do that anyway and how much money it must save your household, I’d call that a pretty bloody decent trade, wouldn’t you?” He turned away and reached for the bag he’d set down by the kiosk door, then paused and glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, and for pity’s sake, at least try taking an interest in his life occasionally? For some reason, he’s still under the impression you actually give a damn.”

“... You never used to be this disrespectful, Misha,” she managed eventually, shaking her head in ‘sadness’.

“You mean ‘this is the first time I’ve ever called out for your bullshit’,” he returned instantly. “There’s your mistake, Missus Gulczyński: you say ‘respectful’ to a teenager when what you mean is compliant and obedient. You assumed that the reason I’ve always been peaceful around you is because I don’t know how to be unruly. All I ever needed was the right reasons – and your little standover routine gave me one. How about you do us both a favour, and don’t repeat it, awwright? Have a nice day.”

 

An out-take from Distance and Perspective, once the Scoobies reach Martinique and meet up with their ‘colleagues’. And yes, it’s probably a little Sue-ish to have Taz read people off like this, but if they decide they want to return the favour, she’ll stand there and hear them out. And then things will really turn into a slanging match. Remember, this is about in the time-frame when Inca Mummy Girl and Reptile Boy would’ve happened, so reader opinions on exactly what early-S2-Willow’s reaction would be to getting read her pedigree like this (fleeing? breaking down in tears? both, neither?) are eagerly sought.

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[Somewhere] Martinique
[Mid-October] 1997

“If Xander wants to have a ‘holiday fling’, why can’t he have it with me?” Willow wailed plaintively.

Before Buffy could answer that, Taz rounded on the smaller girl and gave her a flat, unimpressed look. “Counter-question: has it ever occurred to you that just maybe Xander’s tastes don’t run towards children?”

“Buh – wuh – I’m not a child!” the redhead protested.

“That’s news to me!” was the unyielding response. “The cutesy falsetto voice, the baby-talk vocabulary, the parentally-approved wardrobe... Willow, you carry yourself like a fucking eight-year-old! Was the Second Grade really such a great time and place in your life that you decided you never wanted to leave? Or is that what you think your parents want you to be forever, because that’s the last time they actually paid attention to you?”

[Willow reacts, Buffy goes after her.]

“Huh. I may be the Surgeon of Mean, but any time you want to be my assistant –” Cordelia began.

All it earned her was a pointer-finger jammed into her face. “Don’t try to draw parallels between us, Chase. You’re a bully, which automatically makes you a coward and a sadist, and in my book that puts you beneath contempt. I tell people harsh truths because the first step to fixing a problem in life is accurately defining it. You tell people harsh truths because you get off on seeing them in pain. We. Are not. The same.”

 

An out-take from the next installment of Valhalla Can Wait, showing us one of the worst enemies with which a Slayer or Watcher will ever have to contend. (Image links are crucial. I spent a lot of time on those props, dammit!)

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Australasian Regional Operations Centre, British Council of Watchers
Mansfield Building, 315 High Street
Maitland, New South Wales, Australia
xx:xx, Sunday, 20 March, 1994

The Australasian ‘Situation Room’ was hardly as high-tech or glamourous as Hollywood depictions of War Rooms; indeed, it owed more to a Dowding System plotting room. Large paper maps hung on two walls, overlaid by two layers of clear acetate. One wall held maps of every Australian state or major territory (the ACT was folded into New South Wales) and the nation’s outlying islands and possessions, facing a more sparsely-inhabited wall showing the three main islands of New Zealand, and a fourth map clustering its possessions together. The acetate covers were marked with a system of colour-coded QuikStik™ sticky-dots marking locales requiring attention. The top sheet bore blue stickers showing the Watcher teams assigned to given locales, with the number of members written on each (F(ield Operatives), T(rained Watchers), A(pprentices)); a blue dot with an overlying gold star was a Slayer and her Watcher(s). The stickers on the bottom sheet represented each locale’s assessed status: green was ‘low hostile activity’/‘situation placid’; yellow was ‘moderate activity’/‘situation concerning’; orange was ‘high activity’/‘situation desperate’; red was ‘overwhelming activity’/‘situation critical’. Black stickers were the notional (and quietly dreaded) ‘imminent apocalypse’, but in living memory, much less since moving into this building seven years ago, no-one in the Australasia OpCentre had ever seen one applied to their boards.

A central table collated all these detailed breakdowns into one overall picture, spread across a map of Australasia; acetate overlays gave the colour-status of each sub-region at a glance, while friendly teams were blue plastic counters the size of poker-chips, shuffled about with croupier sticks. Each counter bore the same information as the corresponding sticker, but some ‘humourist’ had devised inlaid icons for friendly forces: Field Operatives were red Walther PPKs, Trained Watchers were silver sparking wands, and Apprentices vellum-ivory open books.

Every day’s mail brought a wave of ‘letters’, each containing coded weekly updates from a given region. Electronic means were deemed too easy to intercept, but the mail was sacrosanct and would always reach the intended recipient(s) unopened, so for all the Progressives’ protests about the delays it created, and how the coding process restricted the senders’ vocabulary to pre-arranged code-groups that stripped their communications of important details, it was still the only ‘acceptably secure’ way to pass information between teams and the OpCentre. Decryption clerks were assigned to given regions — one for each Australian state or territory, another for the outlying possessions, two covering all of New Zealand — and every day, the room was filled with the clatter of typewriters as those clerks turned code-groups into text on message-forms.

One of the decryption clerks from the New Zealand desk came to his supervisor, two message-forms in his hand and concern in his expression. “Last week’s situation reports from Napier, Sir, freshly decoded.”

“All right, let’s see McKellar’s, first. Might as well see what dire emergency has our fifteen-year-old drama-queen all aflutter this week,” the senior man sniffed, taking the first form. It was a quick read, and he rolled his eyes as he came to the end. “Same as always: ‘the sky is falling, send us everything and the kitchen sink right now’. High-strung little prat,” he scoffed. “If he didn’t want to be overwhelmed by the responsibilities of being a Watcher, he shouldn’t have presumed to take them on without training!”

I don’t recall him being given much choice in the matter! the clerk didn’t point out. “He does paint a rather bleak picture, sir.”

“That panicky little twerp always does. He has no experience or training to give him a sense of proportion, and considering that he’s shagging his Slayer, he’s so desperate to save her life that he’d do or say anything he can think of! Give me the other one.”

The clerk again bit his tongue and handed over the second decoded report.

“See? A Watcher with proper training and two decades’ experience assures us — once again, I might note! — that nothing has happened in Napier, nothing is happening in Napier, and nothing will happen in Napier. And why would anything happen in Napier? It’s New Zealand! The place is a backwater at the arse-end of the world! It has nothing anybody wants — unless they’re running short of sheep to shag.”

As a loyal Australian, the clerk would normally bite on that (any excuse to hassle the Kiwis was a good one), but instead his eyes went to the only marker on the plot-table whose sloped display-face had a gold sword-icon impaling its vertical back, like Excalibur in the stone. “Could be, sir. But Zyrianova is the only Slayer we have in Oceania, and no matter how much this observer demands it, Central Ops won’t reassign her to another region, and they won’t approve a sanction operation. I think there’s more going on here than we realise — and McKellar’s the bloke at the coalface. Something tells me he’s seeing something we aren’t.”

His supervisor gave him a glare. Every week, the same old argument.... “Very well,” he huffed testily. “If you still feel like wasting your time, go ahead and forward both messages to Central. But I can tell you right now, I know which version they’ll believe.”

Yeah, and I’m pretty sure it’s the wrong bloody one! the Australian didn’t say.

 

A little of the world-building behind the [alt-history] situation in New Zealand during the timeframe of Taz and Misha’s adventures.

= = = = =​

Operation MATCHBOX was a CIA-sponsored arms-smuggling program whereby Stormhawk agents and logistical apparatus, with the complicity of CIA operatives, were used as cut-outs to acquire black-market weapons, munitions, and the blueprints for their illicit production. Nominally this activity was intended to funnel the resulting ordnance into the Balkans as plausibly-deniable U.S. military aid to the Croatians and Bosnians, in violation of the U.N. weapons embargo, but in practice only ~60% of the throughput reached that theatre; the other 40% was skimmed off and divided equally between Stormhawk operations in New Zealand and Arulco, being smuggled to ‘anti-government insurgents’ in those countries to bolster the capabilities of the insurgency, thereby reinforcing the perceived case for increased Stormhawk funding and involvement in suppressing those self-same insurgents.
In reality, this had very little effect on the situation in New Zealand, where local grievances had not yet escalated to armed violence, and good-faith negotiations were keeping it that way. Much of the man-portable ordnance sent or produced there ended up warehoused, employed for false-flag attacks by Stormhawk operatives trying to astroturf an anti-government insurgency that otherwise did not exist, or seized by pro-government militias and used against Stormhawk when they launched their coup attempt in mid-1996. Contrariwise, ordnance provided under Operation MATCHBOX proved vital to the operations of the Arulcan Resistance throughout the early-mid-1990s.
President Nance was made aware of Operation MATCHBOX as part of his briefings on the U.S. intervention in New Zealand. Deemed to have grossly exceeded its mandate and outlasted its usefulness, the program was immediately terminated by Presidential order, with a number of the personnel involved either being surrendered to New Zealand authorities for prosecution or retired (with varying degrees of prejudice). The CIA’s contributing role to the near-overthrow of a genuinely democratic government in a U.S.-friendly nation is considered a major driving factor in the extravagant degree of reconstruction funding and military-aid extended to the New Zealanders in the aftermath of the debacle.

Ex-Yugoslav:
Zastava M88 (8+1) 9×19mm pistol ¹ ², Alka Mod.93 ‘Kratka’ SMG (9×19mm, 32-round magazine; Croatian ‘emergency’ design) ¹ ²
M80 Zolja (Serbian: Зоља; “wasp”) 64mm LAW ²

PRC/PLA surplus:
Type-56 carbine/Type-63 AR (7.62×39mm SKS-variants), Type-81-1 AR (7.62×39mm AK-variant), Type-56 LMG (7.62×39mm RPD-clone), Type-81 LMG (7.62×39mm SAW; RPK-equivalent version of Type-81-1)
Type-69 RPG
[REDACTED]
Type 58 (ZPU-2 2×14.5mm AAMG)
Type 67 82mm mortar, Type W99 4-round 82mm automortar (2B9 Vasilek 82mm clip-fed automortar)
Type-63 (towed 12×107mm MRL) ¹ ²
[REDACTED]

South Africa:
M26 fragmentation grenade
ZT-3 Ingwe ATGM

‘Stored pending contracts’:
[REDACTED]

¹ covert indigenous production in Arulco
² covert indigenous production in New Zealand