Walking Outside - Chapter 10 (Patreon)

Buffy was silent during the first half of our patrol, while we walked from the school to one of the larger graveyards. Even without knowing about the Hellmouth, the number of graveyards around the town would have rang some bells. Admittedly, I wouldn’t have first jumped to ‘vampire infestation,’ but it would have come off as creepy to me.

“Do you really think the Council is evil?” Buffy asked.

I quirked an eye at her then flopped my head back and forth, from shoulder to shoulder in an exaggerated manner while I tried to remember if I had ever called them actually evil.

Shrugging, I turned to face Buffy as I walked backwards, “Not at all. I think they are an organization, a large one at that, filled with old, rich, white men who often need to make decisions that effect the survival of young, poor, not-white women and children. Historically, that’s hasn’t had a great trend.”

Before she could respond, I raised a hand and continued, “I’m not saying they are racists or evil, or whatever. I’m just saying, they have a lot of factors to balance and things aren’t simple. Just because I disagree with a lot of their decisions and I’ve seen things at some of their worst, doesn’t mean they are actually, big E, Evil.”

Again, I twisted to be walking forward, then tilted my head back to explain to her my perspective as gleaned from the little bit of information we got from the show and comics, the backstory that was added in retroactively and that explained the factors she was dealing with but didn’t really explain things.

“Ever wondered why you aren’t given a generous stipend for food, shelter, and supplies? I mean, sure, they pay Giles and he maintains a library and some weapons, but why don’t you have a safe-house somewhere in town in case your mother ignorantly invites a vampire into her house and is murdered?” I asked, giving her a dirty look since she still hadn’t told her mom.

“Or how about this, why is it you spent any time in a mental institute? They have people in the legal system you know. They could have easily gotten you out. It’s almost certain they eventually did get you pulled out. People who rave about murdering vampires and have caused significant property damage like you did don’t often get let out without some serious medication and oversight. On one hand it was awful strange you were admitted in the first place and stranger still that you got out so quickly. Normally, I wouldn’t expect your records to even have a mention of your last school if they were on the ball, but yet...it’s still their. Weird huh?”

Now she was looking contemplative, but even while she pursed her lips and thought, I could see she was still sweeping her eyes over the graveyard. Even her casual walk still had her balancing her weight cleanly over both feet without overbalancing once. Shifting my vision toward more of the magical side of things – something that still didn’t come naturally – I watched her hunting aura spreading out like a sea-anemone, little tendrils drifting through the night air and then lashing out as her focus shifted. It didn’t appear that she had tagged anything yet so she was still obviously hunting.

“From what I know, the Council is basically suffering what any large organization suffers from. Factions. Groups from within who have different ideas about how resources and time should be spent. Since doing that wrong could mean that people die, they often feel pretty passionate about it. Also, some of them are total ass-hats who just want power. No matter what, you get any group together, and that’s going to happen. Just human nature you know.”

We were passing through the older and richer part of the graveyard now, the mausoleum and statues shifting to tombstones and ground plaques. That would have meant clearer sight lines, but the grounds had clumps of bushes and trees that made it a great deal easier to hide behind. The pathway that we avoided just so happened to walk right past these trees and bushes as well. Surprise.

“Then here you come, the Buff-ster herself, and you piss off the different groups!” I said with a wide grin.

Buffy, being a teenager, couldn’t help but rise to my provocation. She stopped walking and pouted at me in a way that I’m sure had fooled more than one vampire.

“I didn’t do anything!” she said before returning to her march, now with a bit more grumpiness.

“Oh but you did! You did! Council raised and trained Slayers tend to do really well at the start, knowing that things go bump in the night and having daily martial art practice really helps there, but they also tend to die off pretty quick as well. They also are a bit more susceptible to corruptive influences and tend to say ‘yes, sir!’ and run right to their deaths when their Watcher doesn’t know what is going on and orders them to ignore their instincts.” I said to her horrified look.

“Also, you know, the whole, raising little girls with swords instead of dollies, then throwing them at vampires like they are pig-tailed hand grenades tends to make some of them squeamish. On the other hand, free-range Slayers,” I said, gesturing towards her like I was showing off a prize chicken to some crowd hidden in the darkness before I continued, “often die young while putting down a large number of threats, while only a few manage to stick around for any length of time. If they do make it beyond those first few years, they do really well and tend to tell their Watcher or the Council to shove it as needed, and oh yeah, aren’t directly under their thumb.”

I was about to continue my tirade but Buffy’s shout of ‘Incoming!” broke me out of my train of thought. Of course, I was derailed by a vampire body checking me with a running swipe that launched me skipping like a stone across the lawn. I was lucky that I hadn’t been hit while we were among the upright stone markers, but I still managed to slam my shoulder into a ground plaque as I rolled to a stop.

My magical instincts have been a vital resource, and something I’d been leaning on repeatedly to get me through more than one situation. Even psychologically, they had been vital to keeping me on an even keel since I ‘knew’ things that others didn’t. I potentially had the answers and it was only a matter of time that my instincts would announce some vital bit of news and save me.

Which is why when I instinctively flinched and pulled the magic from within the coin. The mana I had been infusing into the coin - that I ‘knew’ wasn’t doing anything – had my instincts insist I do the obvious thing with that mana and pull it into my soul, ready to defend myself. Or in this case, the mana template of the coin, my coin, was pulled into my soul and settled there ready to be called forth to create my coin anew.

It also felt like someone tried to smother the still sickly flickering flame in my chest.

Through blurry eyes I watched the vampire who swatted me away turn to Buffy and charge her exposed back. His weird crab shaped arm raised shoulder high in preparation to be jabbed through the Slayer chest. I couldn’t shout to warn her, I could barely even manage to gasp, but something in the look from the other vampires let Buffy know what was coming and she ducked and spun out of the way, her stake coming up in a blinding strike to drive up and around into the crab-armed vampire’s heart through his back. He dusted slowly, far slower than I expected compared to the TV show, but he still only managed two steps towards his allies before he showered them in a grey dust.

My chest suddenly expanded, my lungs drawing in a sharp gust of air, the dry night air soaked with black mana and the lightest tinge of demonic red mana taint. Three vampires faced off against Buffy, two men and a lead female and only a moment of watching let me know exactly why neophyte vampires were so much less dangerous to Buffy. They really were instinct driven babies. Super strong and fast fang-mouthed babies, but still babies. If all three of them had charged Buffy at once, she would have had a far more difficult time fighting them. Heck, if they just surrounded her and nipped at her heels like a wolf pack they could have quickly worn her down. Instead, the lead female would lunge forward, swiping at Buffy, then the two men would move to either side in a pincher attack...then they would back up and regroup when Buffy swatted them away. Occasionally Buffy would manage to kick or punch one of them hard enough to launch them out of formation and then the other two would get far sloppier and aggressive. A few seconds more and she would have these three dead as well.

No.

In my anger I surged to my feet, my hip and shoulder making violent popping sounds from the sudden movement. I wasn’t hurt beyond a few bruises, though I was certain I would feel worse in the morning. What I was focused on instead of my injuries was the anger and frustration I had been suppressing. All that effort, all that work, and I hadn’t been able to figure things out and it turned out to be so obvious! Of course a template, a copy, would need to be inside my soul. Where as, instead, I had been simply pushing concept tainted mana into and out of the coin over and over again. It all made obvious sense when I thought about it.

Standing there, watching Buffy play tag with the three vampires, I finally reached my limit. I had been working hard to remain calm, to stay rational and controlled. I had to play things carefully, at least while I was so relatively weak, but now I had an excuse to make a statement. I wasn’t just going to play with my spells in a controlled combat situation, my first intention to stay mostly under the radar was now hopelessly naive, maybe even dangerously so. The Council had access to seers. The Council knew spell casters for hire. Presenting myself as a useful pawn that was weak enough to overlook, that was no longer an option now that the Council was trying to throw their weight around. Instead, I should go loud.

Throwing my arms out wide I let a manic grin split my face in two before I put on the most over-the-top three-ring circus announcer voice I could muster.

“Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!” I shouted, putting every ounce of playful joy into my words I could.

Buffy shifted backward and sideways to get me into her sight, while the two male vampires in sync tilted their vamped-out faces to the side in a comical look of consideration more familiar on puppies than blood drinking fiends. The female vampire though was more worrying, she narrowed her eyes as she quickly looked around in assessment.

“I can see you have found your entertainment with our town’s beloved Slayer, but Sunnydale has so much more to offer our Undead-Americans!” I continued in the same tone, Buffy now giving me the same wide-eyed look the female vamp was.

“A lovely night-life,” I said with a gesture toward Buffy.

“Pleasant outdoor areas,” with that I gestured around me while I mentally formed the candle lighting construct, my gaze passing over all three vampires and selecting hundreds of ‘wicks’ per vampire. Namely, the hair on all three of them.

I had taken two slow steps forward as I said the last two lines, but then I paused mid-step and leaned forward and to the side slightly like I was about to let them in to a secret, my body language excluding Buffy from that secret as I turned that shoulder toward her, one hand coming up to the side of my face in an obvious stage-acting.

“Shhhh! Don’t let the Slayer know, but I don’t work as well in the dark as she does. So, how about we add a little light, aye? I work a lot better in the light after all.”

By this point, the weird pause in the fight from my confused ranting was broken. Everyone had straightened from the animalistic predator-about-to-leap stance and were now eyeballing me sharply. I could practically feel the tension from the female vamp as she eye-balled me and I couldn’t help but feel I had let my showmanship go on too long. Still, when I raised one hand high, they all watched my fingers and the sound of them snapping only underscored the sudden bloom of light and heat as all three vampire’s heads burst into eerie yellow flames.

All three screamed and started to lunge before the fire progressed enough to cause them to burst into ash. It was at most a half a second of fire and heat before they combusted and I knew that it was the magical nature of the flame that made it so much more dangerous for the vampire trio rather than the actual heat itself. Vampires were far more flammable than a normal corpse – their magical nature of corruption contrasted strongly with the purity and cleansing nature of fire – but it being a magical flame ramped that up by a significant degree.

For a moment I was filled with righteous glee. I’d been thrown randomly from world to world, I was pushed to accept insanity as reality, but now I was finally able to fight back. That dark, selfish joy, was followed by a sudden connection to the graveyard around me and the black mana that was linked to the land. I closed my eyes as the sudden connection with my soul let me feel the dead under the ground and the many empty graves. Body after body had been sat in the soil of the graveyard and used to incubate the undead, selfishly ripping them from their rest and sending them out into the world to plague the living. While the mana and the land wasn’t evil, the constant use and abuse of the magical environment had left a mark on the magic and was what had turned it selfish, self-centered, and unwilling to bend and turn with the rest of nature around it. Like the other colors of mana, I had to be careful with its use, not because it was so much more dangerous than the other colors but because the selfish changes it could cause me would lend itself to bending me to ignore its abuse.

Opening my eyes, my feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction faded. The look on Buffy’s face, and the way she was clutching her stake, left me feeling like the outsider I was. Different. Other. Inhuman. This was the first time that I truly accepted the difference that I had been playing at, the difference that my magical instincts had been prodding me with all this time.

My body was so close to human that it would take an expert to really tell the difference. My mind was different and would only grow more so, a normal human mind would last only a brief moment under the effects of the not-place outside reality. My soul though...it had become other. When my spark burst to life it changed me and that change was what caused my reality to eject me. I hadn’t traveled away from my own world. My world had rejected me because I had become something so other while still of it that it could not continue with me in it. My magical sense, my ability to travel realities, my skill with languages, they were all a singular facet of the change in my soul and the way it impinged on whatever reality I forced myself into.

Shaking away the effects of the adrenaline on my body, I faced the three piles of ash and the spray formed from the fourth vampire. The Vampire with the weird claw arm was important, he had been a weird red-herring from one of the season’s earlier episodes. I couldn’t remember the episode clearly, but I do remember that this vampire was an odd one and that’s why it stood out. I remembered that it was another monster of the week this time and not this vampire.

“Do you happen to have a Tupperware container on you?” I asked.

The sudden blinking from Buffy was followed by a confused shake of the head.

I slowly walked over to Buffy, ignoring her tension and stopped to stare down at the piles of ashes.

“Any chance you could take a container with you on one of your later hunts? I want some of these vampire ashes for magical purposes. They should be useful for rituals around purifying corruption,” I paused in consideration before I continued, “I might need to be the one to set them on fire to make them better for that.”

I made a ‘hmm’ sound as I stared at the ash piles which were quickly eroding away in the gentle night air. As far as I could tell it wasn’t by the wind, instead, the ash was cleansing some of the demonic taint in the swirls of magic. With a shrug, I pulled my shirt off and scooped the ashes into my improvised bag, then turned to the Slayer that was blinking in confusion at my naked torso before she stared fixedly at my face.

Somewhere between my sudden greed for new magical ingredients and their potential uses and solving the process of gathering them I managed to remember the bad guy for this episode. It was a praying mantis demon and the claw vampire unwittingly acted as a distraction, hiding her from discovery until Xander was taken.

“I’m going to go take these back to Giles. You should show up to school early tomorrow. Your science teacher - the old guy – he is going to be beheaded by a praying mantis demon then pose as a substitute. Ms. France? Ms. England? Something country related, I can’t remember, anyway…” here I drifted off as Buffy’s eyes widened comically at my words. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how disjointed and random I must have seemed. I was likely suffering under some kind of magical side-effect from gaining a new land connection. I know I had been too calm and rational when I had snagged White and Blue before, this could be something similar since I didn’t particularly feel that friendly or even care about the look Buffy was giving me.

“...anyway, she will make all the men around her into total dorks who will do whatever she wants. You should bring a insect repelling sound generator and go kill her before she rapes then eats one of your male classmates. Oh, also! Check carefully for any eggs she might have laid. You don’t want those hatching somewhere and running off. Eww.”

I screwed up in disgust at the memory of the odd slimy eggs that had been at the end of episode, hidden in a locker and shaking at the final fade out of the episode after Buffy had rescued Xander and the snotty annoying male classmate. Turning, I wandered off into the dark of the graveyard heading toward Giles’ apartment, shirtless and with dust piled up in my haphazardly formed bag.