Walking Outside - Chapter 9 (Patreon)

‘I may have made a strategic mistake,’ I thought to myself before my back impacted the wall of the training room, followed by my feet moments later. Then I fell, dropping head first to the padded floor. Buffy said something in a concerned tone, but I couldn’t make it out since I was trying to listen through my knees at that point. Luckily, it appeared that I hadn’t completely alienated my two trainers as they were helping me unfold myself moments later.

My mistake was not in asking Buffy to spar with me – if I lived long enough I would definitely be fighting opponents faster and stronger than myself and I had the perfect sparring partner in Buffy. Namely, in that she didn’t actually want to kill me. No, my mistake was the persona I had assumed so I could control how much of my future knowledge I gave out. I had to distract and bamboozle the Scoobies and Giles, I had little choice there, but the act I picked was second nature to me. The smart-ass flippant, carefree and thoughtless but smart-Alec act was one I had honed through years of harassing teachers, bosses, and especially the snooty students that knew my own past. It was good in one sense - I knew how to play the part – but I was not particularly good at playing the part while not pissing off everyone around me.

Buffy was still hung up on me not being willing to let her know future information. After the ‘Amy and her Mom’ issue she had bugged me for every little bit of future information she could get. I had flatly refused her. My excuse was that what I was doing was like remembering something, only since I was remembering things that haven’t happened yet, I needed things that linked to those future events to remember them. Like jogging my memory. Which, again, wasn’t a lie. Everything that I said was true, it was just misleading as hell.

Giles’ anger, well contained and controlled, came from a tiny, little oversight I hadn’t really considered. Of course, the moment I thought about the things I had said and done as well as his own history, it all snapped together.

I mentioned all the ways Willow would have gone wrong in the future. How she would almost lose herself in dark magic and become addicted. How this would have happened while under Giles’ direct supervision. Given his own history with magic addiction and abuse and how it literally marked him to this day…

Add in that he found me throwing around magic while laughing like a mad man the day after my diatribe which implied his own failings thrice over and that must have stung like a branding iron. Worse, he had left me a book filled with cleansing and purification spell and rituals for me the next morning. I had then explained – without even considering his point of view – that my kind were immune to the kind of corruption and addiction that was caused by the magic in this dimension being filled with demonic toxic waste. I failed to mention that was mostly because I was sourcing my magic through the dimensional filter that connected me to my tapped lands.

Of course, I had a hint of what the problem was when I asked to spar with Buffy. Her nasty grin of anticipation I had expected. His quick grin and even quicker acceptance caught me off guard. I knew he had held Xander back from training for a year at least before he had accepted the need for the Scoobies to train. But, I had brushed it off as the differences in our ages or my non-human (debatable!) origin.

Nope. He was just pissed.

Swaying back and forth a bit, I let my head clear while I slowly stretched and tested each of my joints, watching the both of them subtly as I did. Both seemed a tad guilty about their actions, but neither said anything.

“Well, that reminds me Giles. I’m going to need a healing spell as soon as you can. Those purifying spells will help – I’m sure of it – but healing will help more. It doesn’t matter if it’s only a spell that can close a paper-cut. Anything you can find that isn’t invoking a spirit or god will work,” I said before giving my back one long stretch and falling back into a boxer’s stance.

I had never taken a martial art in my life. Instead, my father had insisted in boxing. It had been something his father had pushed on him as a child and he had wanted to continue the tradition, but like many of his efforts, he had gotten distracted and it had been left to the wayside. For a moment, I felt a bolt of homesickness and grief shoot through me, but I managed to reign it in and return my focus to the here and now. I could wallow in my emotions later. Once I started down that road, I would be lost to it until I had worked through my feelings and I simply didn’t have the safety or stability to allow that at the moment.

Giles seemed willing to take the conversational gambit I had thrown out, but Buffy stepped forward and spoke quickly.

“Are you ok? I really didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said.

I shook my head, mostly since in the moment she obviously had intended to hurt me. Not lethally, not even in a debilitating way, but she had clearly turned her throw to make sure I ended up lobbed at the wall. If it had actually been an accident, I could have been hurt far worse than just a bruise on my back and my pride.

I gave her a smile, one that I’m sure Giles could see through, and said, “Don’t worry about it Buffy. Training hurts, I knew what I was getting into when I asked to spar with a Slayer. Better to cry here than bleed out there.”

Buffy seemed to accept my words at face value, but Giles could see I was still annoyed that ‘starting out easy’ had become ‘learning to fly.’ Though, I hadn’t really expected anything else. A human versus a Slayer, unlike in the TV show, was clearly a losing battle before it started. Buffy wasn’t a particularly good choice as a sparring partner either. When I managed to enhance my body I would need to have a similarly enhanced trainer for my martial training. Buffy was closer to an instinctual brawler with a few integrated moves from standard martial arts. That alone had left me less impressed with the Council. They either hadn’t been working to create a formal martial art around enhanced strength and speed, or they had intentionally not passed it on to the Slayer and her Watcher. Either way, I had asked not because I wanted to get better at martial arts, I asked because I wanted to get better at creating a template while under duress.

Not that I had managed to fully create a template of anything. I had, in fact, been spectacularly failing at that task. Part of the issue was that I hadn’t talked to any of the Scoobies or Giles about the issue. I’ve been keeping my ability to create templates a secret. If the Watcher’s Council decides to try and kidnap me or do some other asinine thing, my ability to summon powerful weapons and minions would be a surprising advantage.

If I could actually get it to work! My instincts insist I've figured it out and what I need to do next is obvious. Well, what is it?

While I unfolded myself from my second trip to the ground and stumbled back to my feet, I kept trying to infuse my magic into the coin in my pocket. In the real world, nothing could be seen, but to my magical senses it felt like a whirlwind of magic slowly filling up the silver dollar causing to glow with a bright white light. I chose to use White based mana instead of unflavored magic simply because I was hoping to try and create some kind of purification amulet out of the coin later. Since I was failing anyway, it shouldn’t matter what kind of magic I failed with. Might as well hope for something else to work out from my efforts.

“The Council would like a few questions answered before they will supply any further spells,” Giles said.

Dropping my hands from my blocked stance I stared at Giles. While the older man didn’t flinch, I could practically feel Buffy growing uncomfortable.

“Our deal was spells and support for my future knowledge. We made our agreement. I’ve fulfilled my part of the deal. Worse, I need that spell to further your efforts. I want and need a healing spell, but both of you need it far more than I do,” I said.

Giles was about to answer before I raised my hand in a stopping motion.

“Don’t. It doesn’t matter. If the Council had simply asked their questions, I would have answered what I could. Instead, they attempted to throw around their supposed power over me in violation of our agreement. Now I can’t ignore their arrogance because they have attempted to violate our deal. I have no choice but to make it clear that I can’t be manipulated or bullied. Doing anything else would mean they would simply do something worse.”

Closing my raised hand into a fist I then dramatically left one finger up in a waiting position then redirected it to point at Buffy and then at him.

“I have made a deal with you and with Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies. You and them had an implicit agreement and I was willing to continue honoring it. Despite the agreement being with you and not them, but I am now no longer interested in the Council or interested in assisting them. Which changes little for me since they will collapse within a few years anyway and there is almost nothing that could have been done to stop it. Before, I would have been honor bound to inform them of whatever I could to help, now I have no such requirement. Their arrogance will only exasperate the situation and accelerate their fate. You may want to insure your citizenship so they can’t revoke your Green Card as was one of the faction’s original plan. Idiots, the lot of them,” I said while shaking my head then returning to my original stance like the discussion was over.

Buffy was standing, wide eyed, while Giles’ mouth opened and closed repeatedly before he slumped from his original stance.

“You know they wont be happy with that response?” Giles finally asked.

I simply shrugged.

“Nothing has changed between us. I had extended my assistance to the Council simply because you would have extended that same assistance on their behalf. I don’t care about them. They have measurably harmed the world and made things worse. As has happened before and will happen again, the group controlling and manipulating the Slayer will collapse and some other group will take up the slack or the world will end. Those aren’t part of my agreement.”

“How can you say that! Don’t you care?” Buffy said, her voice just barely below a shout.

I stopped and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to find a way to explain both my position and why I held that position. My perspective was so skewed from her own that it was hard to make it clear, worse, I could tell that my perspective was going to grow and change as I changed and I had to reason my way to positions which would last me in my very long life and that I could live with.

I glanced up at her before I sighed and plopped myself down on the table with all Buffy’s weapons waiting for her later patrolling.

“Have you heard the story of the small child that strolled along the sea shore, throwing starfish into the sea?” I asked.

Giles remained silent, but Buffy slowly shook her head at my question.

With a near defeated shrug, I leaned back and started.

“Once upon a time, an old man was wandering along a beach, as he so often did in his retirement, when he came upon a a small child throwing beached sea stars into the sea. The man looked out over the vast beach and the endless stretch of sand with the many animals that would never be helped. Certainly they could not be helped before high tide. So, he asked the child, ‘Why do you do this? You can never help them all.’ To which the child answered, ‘But it helps this one and any others I help, and that will mean the world to them.’” I said, ending my partially archaic sounding tone and cadence before lazily looking over at Buffy.

“But…” she said, her head tilting slightly in confusion. My position seemed to contradict the moral of the story, and it did.

Then I nodded to Buffy and Giles who was still staring at me with a silent question.

“Should the child continue if one of those starfish tries to eat him? Should he continue to help it? What about if the old man chases him and tries to beat him for his actions? How about if the beach is infested with vampires and stopping to help a sea star might mean his life? What if his mother is sick and he has promised to search the shore for a plant that can be used to cure her? And so on, and so on, and so on,” I said with a rolling wave of my hand.

“I made an agreement to you and Giles. One thing that will matter in a life as long as mine will become is that I need to make good on my agreements. Everyone knows not to trust a demon because it will always work to break whatever agreement it signs. It will cheat. The spirit even if not the letter. I want my reputation in a thousand years, or ten thousand to be clear,” I said while tapping the table to underline each of my words, “Spirit. And. Letter. But I will not be controlled or manipulated, and the Council is attempting to do exactly that. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. If they push me on this, I will make them sorry. I’m relatively weak and young now, and they may very well be able to kill me or stop me. But I would rather die than spend ten thousand years being confined to a lamp, or have my soul forced into an object, or bound into a wish, or any of a thousand other things that happen to beings of my power when they start violating agreements. Eventually, over a long enough time frame, the only thing that will matter is my reputation. They also better not miss if they try. Since I’ll then have to run to survive. Then come back and eliminate them entirely, root and branch, and in the most obviously over the top way possible. Again, reputation, you understand,” I said, my eyes drifting away from Buffy’s suddenly wide eyes and toward Giles’ now narrowed ones.

“I don’t have any real option on this. ‘Start as you intend to continue’ as the saying goes. I want to help Buffy and the Scoobies, I want to help you Giles’, and right now I’m just wandering along the beach. I’ve found a few starfish who need to be back in the water and I’ve found a great excuse to toss them back in. It costs me almost nothing, heck, it even lets me feel good about myself to help!” I chuckled.

“But don’t mistake me. If one of my elders shows up with a stick, I’m running until I can come back with a bigger one. If we are lucky, then they will just ignore the rest of this dimension and continue on their way. If one of those starfish struggles while I try to help, I’m going to drop it in the sand and move on. They don't want my help or want to make things difficult? So be it. If it they try to bite me…”

Giles’ posture straightened, his ‘oh hum, I’m so British and unoffensive’ mannerism fading away as Ripper poked his head out of his disguise and stared at me behind thin round glasses.

“...and if you died and one of those elders showed up and found your corpse?” he asked with a considering look.

Again, I shrugged in a negligent way.

“They hand out prizes? Destruction of the dimension? The Powers That Be get a spanking while the Great Evils are turned into subordinates? The reverse? Everything and everyone is turned into chocolate pudding? I can’t say. I’m doing the best I can to imagine what the meof ten thousand years from now would prefer me to do while I stay true to what the me of nowwants, and I know myself well enough to make some guesses, and my instincts are helping some,” I said then hopped up from my slumped and nearly defeated position.

Grabbing a towel, I wiped my face then continued.

“I don’t really know them, I’m just going by what I know of past behavior and that’s whimsical at best. Destruction, or benediction, but almost certainly not neutrality.If you have done something to me, then you might try to do the same to them. I haven’t pissed off any of my kind, yet, so we don’t need to deal with a personal grudge issue, but even that’s not saying much. Some of my kind have no problem with an enemy also being a friend or a lover. After a few million years, only your peers can really understand you and we are even odder than most long lived things,” again, my shoulders shrugged.

“After a million years, the loss of an enemy could be as large a blow as losing a friend and what am I but a potential friend or enemy, aye?”

To my surprise, when I reached for a water bottle, the two shifted their body weight subtly. If I hadn’t had both of them directly in my line of sight, I wouldn’t have noticed.

Quickly, I locked eyes with one, then the other, the badly hidden cautiousness in Buffy’s eyes hurt a bit, but the stoic and innocent look of curiosity in Giles’ eyes – hiding a greater caution than Buffy’s I was sure – hurt a bit more.

“Nothing has changed with our deal Buffy, Giles’, I’m not going to suddenly attack you unless you attack me. You’re the good guys remember? I likethe good guys.”

“And the Council aren’t the good guys?” Buffy asked with a note of concern before glancing at Giles.

“Better than most demons, worse than some. They don’t want humanity dead and are generally working to keep it that way,” I answered honestly.

Before Buffy could respond, Giles said, “Well, with that rousing bit of flattery, how could you fail to support them? I know what you are doing, and you won’t get me to abandon the Council or my oath as a Watcher.”

Snagging my jacket and struggling to pull it on, making it more of a farce than I needed to in order to make myself seem less threatening, I chuckled good naturedly.

“Why are you laughing,” Buffy finally asked at my continued and frankly slightly creepy snicker.

Looking at Giles I just shrugged again, this time to set my jacket around my shoulders a bit better and to let the skin of my slowly forming bruise stretch a bit to avoid stiffening.

“I’m not going to have to do a thing Giles. The Council will do it well enough on their own. Remember? I know their future, and I know what they and those like them have done in the past. If we are lucky, when you tell them about this discussion, the Council will grow cautious and self reflective and they might actually last longer. I doubt it, but it could happen.”

Slipping on my hat, I turned to Buffy and ignored the annoyed look on Giles’ face.

“So, can I come with you on your patrol? I want to try out a few of my spells on some vampires!” I said, letting my face and body language shift into a bit of childlike joy and excitement. Had to continue the act I started with and I had honestly grown to enjoy the emotional whiplash I could cause.

To the cautious nod from Buffy, after she subtly checked with Giles, I couldn’t help but beaming a bright and cheerful smile at the Buff-ster. Meanwhile, I kept infusing the silver coin in my pocket with White mana, pushing it in and pulling it out. I had only been cautiously playing with creating a template before, most of my real efforts to figure out what I was doing wrong taking place while I was in the privacy of the shower. But, with the Council beginning to throw their weight around, I needed to master the ability sooner rather than later.