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Present Childe by Ariel Dawn
 
Avoiding Fiery Death
 
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Disclaimer: Just playin’

Author’s note: Some dialogue taken from “Graduation Day part 1.” Once again I hug and thank the wonderful BTL for the great betaing. She beta’d this chapter twice too: once BH (Before Hiatus) and once after.
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Chapter 22: Avoiding Fiery Death

First day of school back, after the Prom, the hallways of Sunnydale High were full of students eagerly discussing just what had happened at prom and just who had slept with whom. It was pretty common knowledge now that Anya and Xander were together, but the biggest news was Faith and her outburst and the fact that she had showed up at prom with blood on her clothes.

Buffy was keenly interested in finding out the cause of Faith's outburst. Avoiding the patches of sunlight, Buffy made her way through the hallways of the high school, in search of Giles who, she hoped, would explain what she wanted to know. She was also enjoying the fact that soon she would be in possession of a piece of paper that stated she never had to come back to this building of hell and disappointment again.

Everywhere students were saying good bye to teachers and classmates. Even Willow seemed to be overly friendly with Harmony for some reason. Buffy walked down the steps to her friend’s location just as the vapid airhead departed.

“Oh, I'm gonna miss her,” declared Willow in a longing voice.

“Don't you hate her?” asked Buffy, completely confused.

“Yes, with a fiery vengeance,” explained Willow. “She picked on me for ten years, the vacuous tramp. It's like a sickness, Buffy. I'm just missing everything. I miss P.E.”

“I think it's contagious. The whole senior class has turned into the Sixties, or what I would have imagined the Sixties would have been like without the war and the hairy armpits,” explained Buffy.

“You don't feel it?” asked the red head with confusion.

“No, I don't. I guess I'll miss stuff, but I just don't get the whole graduation thing. I mean, you get a piece of paper and nothing changes. I don't even think I'm gonna go. It’s during the day and all, I think I’d like to not be dust.”

At that moment they passed the student lounge, and the soda machine, Willow gave the machine a tender look.

“Old trusty soda machine. I push you for root beer, you give me coke,” cooed Willow at the machine. Then she turned with a frown towards her friend. “What do you mean, not go? Why not?”

“You weren’t listening...Sunlight, day? Besides, I thought maybe I’d spend my time productively. Like fighting the Mayor in his demony state, snacking on the populace. I hear that’s good times. You know, provided if it’s indoors and away from that thing I like to affectionately call fiery death,” explained Buffy as they sat down at a table.

“ You can't do both?” asked Willow.

Xander strolled by and sat with them. “Both what?”

“Go to graduation, and thereby bursting into flame, and fight the Mayor,” answered Buffy.

“ The Mayor? What, you guys didn't hear?” he said, all excited like.

“Hear what?” asked Buffy.

“Guess who our commencement speaker is?” continued Xander, still failing to give information that Buffy was increasingly aware that might be important.

“Siegfried?” offered Willow.

“No.”

“Roy?” asked Willow again.

“No.”

“One of the tigers?” said Willow hopefully.

“Come out of the fantasy, Will,” asked Xander patiently.

“I don't believe this,” exclaimed Buffy, coming to the conclusion just fine on her own, without Willow and Xander‘s games.

“Lends credence to my whole ‘"I'm gonna die"’ theorem, doesn't it?” he prattled on.

“The Mayor at graduation? A hundred helpless kids to feed on. Got any other surprises for us?” asked Buffy. “Maybe Faith will graduate with honours?”
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The Slayer in question was in the library, completely loud and grr at the situation unfolding there. Buffy peered into the library window, watching and listening.

“I will not!” protested the actual slayer towards the unknown British man that stood next to Giles.

“You will. The Council demands it.”

“Ya, ‘cause the last time I did something the Council demanded I didn’t watch thirty men get slaughtered right in front of my eyes. Forgive me if I don’t run jumping with joy every time I get orders from on high.”

“You were spared, that is your fortune. It seems odd that the Slayer of Slayers and his Childe would spare, you, a slayer. Why is it that you aren’t dead?” he asked.

Buffy felt that this was the time to enter the conversation and easily parted the library doors with almost no sound.

“’Cause she’s mine, and no vampire can put his fangs in her without my say so,” she said startling the Slayer and the two watchers in the room.

The new watcher immediately grabbed a cross and pointed it at Buffy.

“Please,” said Buffy with a roll of her eyes. “Or more to the point, just who the hell are you?” she asked looking him up and down.

“I am Wesley Wyndham-Price,” he introduced himself grandly, smoothing down his tie.

Buffy looked Wesley up and down with a completely judgemental look. “Well, get this Wesley, don’t mess with me or my people.” Buffy then turned to Giles. “The Mayor’s up to something. Willow told me this Vulcanologist guy has been murdered. It has Mayor written all over it.”

“There were words on the body?” asked Wesley curiously, completely missing the point.

“No, you git,” said Buffy, proudly demonstrating her new vocabulary. “Spike taught me that one,” she giggled.

“Have you...?” started Giles, before Buffy could slap down a newspaper clipping on the table.

Giles peered down at the article and read it to himself. As Giles read, Buffy stared down Wesley, who was still holding the cross. As if a cross could stop her from eating him if she had really wanted to eat him. She was also curious about what Faith was doing. Her anger at whatever Wesley had ordered her to do was keeping the Slayer tight lipped and clearly furious, but she hadn't left the library yet.

“Brutally stabbed. Mr. Wirth, visiting professor of geology. There's nothing in here that bellows motive,” noted Giles.

“Random killing, maybe?” asked Faith, instantly curious about the killing and its association with the mayor.

“The Mayor wanted the good professor out of the way,” said Giles, thinking out loud.

“Which leads to the question, how come? I'm gonna destroy the entire city, but I take the time to kill harmless Lester first?” questioned Buffy with a frown.

“Tying up loose ends? Lester had something or knew something,” offered Giles, leaving the article on the table and stepping away from it.

“Then I wanna know too. The Mayor's trying to hide. I say we go seek,” suggested Faith.

“Ah. By attempting to keep a valuable clue from us, the Mayor may have inadvertently led us right to it,” observed Wesley grandly, as if dispensing crucial advice that no one had thought of before.

“What page are you on, Wes? 'Cause we already got there,” snarked Buffy. “Well I’m off, done my do gooding for the day. Have fun Faithy!”

Buffy didn’t even look over her shoulder as she left the library. She didn't have to look back to feel the glare that Faith was giving to her.
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Buffy was fully confident in Faith’s ability to be the Slayer. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was retired. Elizabeth the Vampire had a mother to warn out of town.

Things hadn’t been so good between them since she’d moved away with Spike to LA for the second time. They had issues. Buffy was a vampire, and Joyce had tried to set Buffy on fire. Yes, they talked on the phone, and occasionally met for coffee in the brightly lit Espresso Pump. Buffy had even been over to dinner once or twice. But to say that everything was right as rain? No, she couldn’t say that.

And her mother was looking forward to her graduation, if not the actual ceremony ‘cause Buffy couldn’t attend that. Sunlight and all.

Buffy trudged through the sewers, trying not to get any grossness on her shoes. It was slightly ironic that a being with just an enhanced sense of smell was forced to use just a smelly route to visit her mother during the day. Entering the house, Buffy stalked up to her mother’s room hoping that she’d it’d be easier if there was already a bag packed for her mom.

Buffy heard the front door open, indicating that her mother was home from the gallery sooner than she thought she would be.

“Buffy?” asked Joyce perplexed as she entered her bedroom. “Are you stealing my clothes?”

Buffy tried to suppress her laugh at the thought that she would actually wear any of her mother's clothes. She shook off the laugh as she remembered why she was packing a bag for her mom.

“Mom, I need you to leave town. Tonight,” said Buffy seriously.

“Buffy, I'd miss your graduation,” observed Joyce.

“Yeah, that's sort of the idea. I’m not going to the ceremony anyway, sunlight, death, dust,” Buffy explained with a shrug of her shoulders.

“But the afterwards, I was hoping to get pictures of you and your friends, after the sun went down of course...“

“Mom, graduation is a pointless ceremony where you sit around and listen to a bunch of boring speeches until someone hands you a piece of paper that says you’ve graduated which you already know and maroon does nothing for my complexion, so don't argue, okay?”

“What, is some terrible demon going to attack the school?” asked Joyce jokingly, but when she saw Buffy’s look realised that it was what was going to happen. “Oh, I see. Oh, you know, Buffy, looking back on everything that's happened, maybe I should have sent you to a different school.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything, Mom,“ noted Buffy packing the last bit of clothes. “I probably would have just tried to save the world in a kilt. Which just screams non PG slaying if you ask me. Just promise me that you'll be far away from here.”

“I'm not leaving you to face an awful monster. If I go anywhere, you're going with me,” declared Joyce.

“I should. I should leave this whole thing to Faith. Take you and Spike and get the hell out of Dodge. I can’t, not this time Mom.”

“Well then I can't either,” declared her mother resolutely.

Buffy put her hands on her hips. “I’ll have minions keep you away Mom. Think about this. Do you want to go under your own power or do you want slimy, unwashed minions packing you away in the trunk of a car? ‘Cause it can go either way.“

Joyce sighed the sigh of the defeated.
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Buffy walked into her house on Crawford Street to see Anya packing up a ugly, used, battered old car.

“Chickening out?” Buffy asked. “We’re all going to get eaten by a demon and you’re not going to stick around for the fondue afterwards?”

Anya shook her head. “I’m new to this whole human thing, but you know what? I don’t want to die. I’m still hoping to get my amulet back. I don’t want to die.”

“Fair enough,” noted Buffy. “But we could use your help, you’ve been loads of help already. What’s one little apocalypse under your belt? The other demons won’t look down on you for it. Promise.”

“Funny.”

“Ooh! Or how about this? You stick around for the fighting and the death mayhem and blood and I’ll help you get your amulet back again. How’s that for a deal? Besides, I think Xander likes you.”

Anya pondered it for a moment. "My amulet for helping you, horribly unprepared group of demon hunters, to destroy possibly the largest and most powerful demon that you've ever faced? Why?"

"Xander'll be there..."
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Buffy, holding Spike’s hand, walked though the swinging doors of the library, the light from the incandescent bulbs in the library creating a yellow glow in the room, a stark contrast to the florescent vibrating madness that permeated the rest of the school. Wesley, Faith, and Giles hovered around a pile of papers and books on the table.

Faith instantly knew that the vampires had arrived. She looked nervously at the pair.

“This is truly fascinating,” exclaimed Wesley, his eyes pouring. over what Buffy assumed were documents Faith had retrieved from the professor’s office.

“What?” asked Giles, acknowledging Buffy and Spike as they walked through the door.

“It seems our Mr. Wirth headed an expedition in Hawaii, digging in old lava beds near a dormant volcano,” explained Wesley, not looking up from the book.

“I'm not fascinated yet,” noted Buffy, moving towards a chair, and indicating to Spike that she wanted him to sit.

“He found something underneath. A carcass, buried by an eruption...” Wesley trailed off as he looked up from the book to the voice that had interrupted him. “I see this time you’ve brought your Sire. Will there be more threats? Or are you actually going to try to bite me this time?”

Spike rolled his eyes, pulling Buffy down on his lap.

“ A carcass?” questioned Giles, trying to get Wesley back on the topic at hand.

“A very large one. Mr. Wirth posits that it might be some heretofore undiscovered dinosaur,” continued Wesley, glaring at the vampire couple.

“A demon?” asked Spike.

“Yes, that would be something that the Mayor would want to keep a secret. If it's the same kind of demon he's turning into and it's dead, it means that, well, he's only impervious to harm until the Ascension. In his demon form, he can be killed,” considered Giles.

“Great. So all we need is a million tons of burning lava. We're saved,” Buffy joked.

“What if it wasn’t lava, luv?“ suggested Spike. “I know quite a few fun toys that make a much prettier flame.“

“Fire pretty,“ agreed Buffy with a smile.
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tbc...

 
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