Walking Outside - Chapter 14 (Patreon)

I’m not sure what I expected to happen when I announced to a keyed up supernatural warrior that their was an invisible threat within reach, but launching herself over the banister and tackling Marcie wasn’t it. Nor did I expect both of them to freeze in embarrassment the moment Buffy really processed what that meant for the tackler when the tackle-ie was naked.

I had to face the fact that I’d let my happiness over finally making progress with a new spell, along with the annoyance of being outed inadvertently to the mayor, push me to messing with the Scoobies more than was probably smart. I didn’t even have the excuse of the Hellmouth messing with my brain like the others did. Watching the Hellmouth react to this new frozen moment of embarrassment actually calmed my fears about it having a sapient force directing its actions.

Enhancing shyness for Marcie, embarrassment for Buffy, lust from Xander, what I could only call dumbfounded confusion for Willow, was not a tactical sign of brilliance. Just ramping up anger from Buffy, and keeping it ramped up, would have been enough to spiral this situation into destruction. Instead, the suddenly shifting emotions – while still negative and being enhanced – caused a lull and pause in the violence.

It also made me uncomfortably aware of the fact that I had been celibate for a while even before Sarah had left. Agreeing that we should break up and that she would move out when she started at her university had been amicable and mutually agreed upon, but it still had put a crimp into our sex life. For some it would have led to frantic bouts of coupling while the rest of their relationship fell apart, but we were both more cerebral people and that’s why we fit so well together as a couple. Our physical relationship had slowly waned even while we had spent more time talking and cuddling. Just another reason my decision making had been so lopsided of late.

Shaking my head, mostly because I absolutely did not need anyone thinking I was perv-ing on a teenager no matter how naked and ridiculous their current position, I tried to calm the situation down.

“Don’t hurt her Buffy. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s a victim in all of this,” I said. Pointing out that she was manhandling a victim was almost a sure fire way to get her to calm down. Luckily, I was right.

Climbing to her feet and snapping my shirt out of my hand in obvious embarrassment turned to anger, she shoved the shirt in the general direction of Marcie. Who, now realizing that I was able to see her was huddling in on herself and avoiding my gaze. Amazingly enough, her attempt to hide was actually enhancing her invisibility spell and making it harder for me to see her. It was mostly useless since I could actually see the framework of magic pressing around her form and diverting light, making it sort of like trying to hide by covering yourself with a neon blanket, but that it was even starting to work on me meant that she had a very effective spell effect.

I wanted it.

Though, not as much as dealing with the slow emotional warping the Hellmouth was causing the Scoobies.

“Now, Ms…Marcie was it?” Giles said, not seemingly able to remember the girl, which was fair. She hadn’t made much of impact in the short time before becoming invisible and Giles had only been here for a month or so before I had gotten to Sunnydale.

The others were silent, Xander making more of an ass of himself than usual since he couldn’t seem to help but stare right below where the floating shirt cut off. Despite the obvious huddling that even only being able to see a shirt would have still made clear. Hence the silent smack that Willow backhanded him with. To be fair to him, Willow had also blushed and stared for a moment, though I think she had smacked him as much to hide her own belated staring. How was she not aware she was into women? I mean, even if she is a lesbian and not bi – which would make some of the staring and obvious ogling she did when Xander was partially naked during the swim meet episode a bit odd – was she really so confused over her romantic and feelings of friendship that she was confusing them for sexual attraction?

Then again; teenager. Horn-dogs, the lot of them.

“I’m Marcie Ross, I was in ninth grade with Xander and Willow,” she said, the pleading to be remembered clear in her voice, but she was also clearly not expecting them to remember her.

“Uh, maybe?” Willow said, turning to Xander and nudging his shoulder.

Facing Willow then quickly back to the floating shirt Xander stuttered for a moment then obviously lied as he said, “Yeah! Um. Marcie. Ross. Who I completely remember. That Marcie.”

Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I turned to Giles only to see that I had inadvertently mirrored his action.

“Well, let me just say Marcie. I’m sorry that they can’t remember you, but part of that has to do with the instinctual spell you are using to hide yourself. It has mild memory fuzzing effects along with your invisibility. Which, might I say? Amazingly effective,” I said with as calm a voice as I could, smiling gently as she hunched further and crossed her arms.

Turning to Giles I asked, “does this school have a metal shop?”

I threw the older man for a moment, my non-sequitur having come out of left field, especially since we were apparently still dealing with a problem.

“Yes? But-” he began before I cut him off.

“Excellent! So which of you lovely ladies would be willing to put up Ms. Ross here?” I asked turning to Willow with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m not sure-” began Giles, but once again I cut him off.

“She needs to get away from the Hellmouth,” so saying, I pointed at the fresco tile pattern in the center of the library.

“She can’t stay with us, that would be uncivilized Giles!” I said, my finger pointing into the air, even taking on a bit of a snooty British accent when I said it, much to Buffy and Xander's snickers.

“Xander can’t house her. Again, uncouth old sport!” I quickly said, smiling at the man's annoyance, thought I could see a bit of an unwilling smile in his face all the same.

“Buffy could house her, but she still hasn’t told her mother about the supernatural and we aren’t quite at the crisis point on that issue yet. Though it is coming soon Buffy,” I said, my face shifting to a stern annoyance where she shifted into a petulant pout.

Then I looked off into the distance like I was trying to remember something and then muttered, “though it would be useful practice for her living with her sister.”

Buffy snapped forward at that then rapid fired questions, “Sister? What sister? I don’t have a sister. Is my mom going to have another kid? With who?”

Giving the Slayer a confused look, I put as much befuddlement in my voice as I could.

“You don’t have a sister. I mean you will eventually always will have had a sister, but you currently don’t yet always have had a sister.”

Their was a long drawn out silence at that, the Scooby gang looking to Giles, then Willow as if she would be able to translate my masterful bullshit which was completely true but entirely unclear.

“Don’t worry about it. It’ll make sense later,” I said, then muttered as if to myself, “got to remember, humans are only able to deal with linear time.”

Then clapping my hands again, as if to clear away the awkward moment I returned to focusing on Willow.

“So that leaves the potential greatest witch of our generation. What do you say Willow? Mind housing a young lady with the amazing instinctual ability of invisibility and a forget fullness spell? Staying in school, and more importantly near the Hellmouth, eventually would have driven her into a psychotic rage where she tried to kill Cordelia and then Buffy. Let’s get her out of here so that doesn’t happen, right?” I said with as cheerful a voice as I could manage.

“She tried to kill Cordelia!?” Buffy shouted, her fists snapping up into a boxing stance, even as Marcie shrank back into herself.

“To be fair. Who hasn’t thought about it,” Xander said with a smirking look to Willow who couldn’t help but nod then quickly shake her head no.

Stepping between the Slayer and in front of Ms. Ross, I brought the focus back to me and off the huddling girl.

“Buffy, she is a victim of the Hellmouth. It’s messing with her magic and her mind, we need to get her away until we can figure out how to help her. In the original timeline the FBI picked her up and trained her and others with the same ability as infiltration and assassin specialists. She should have the option to go back to a normal life if we can help her with it,” she didn’t look she was going to agree with me, but the moment I brought up Marcie perhaps living a normal life, she glanced at the others then nodded.

“Willow, are you comfortable with this?” Giles asked, with obvious concern in his voice.

Willow glanced at each of us, then focused on the shirt floating in mid-air, arms huddling around each other. A look of pity passed over her face and with that I knew we had her.

“Alright, but only until the end of the month when my parents get back from their convention. Even if she is invisible, I’m sure they would notice something was wrong,” she said, her face doing that lip biting thing that meant she was upset that she had to put her foot down about something and was uncomfortable.

Nodding, I reached back and gently directed Marcie around myself and around to stand next to Willow.

“Very well. Now, I hope that just being away from the Hellmouth will calm this magical immune response you seem to have going on, but if not, I should be able to figure something out while Giles researches his book collection for any clues. Just seeing the spells at two different intensity levels should give me some idea. Even if not, worse case, we can get you away from the mental influence of the Hellmouth which has been making this worse for you. Visible and sane would be great, but invisible and sane is not half bad either. Let’s skip the whole invisible and insane thing, it wasn’t a good look.”

Then I turned around and marched over to the main library desk and began to dig around in the various drawers while the others continued to talk discussing Marcie’s needs like clothing and food. I was keeping half an ear out, the detail that if she wears a specific piece of clothing for a while it seemed to fade away along with her was an interesting tidbit, but didn’t distract me from my hunt. Letting out a light cheer when I found a folded map of the school, I slid down the listed rooms until I found the metal shop which was in the ‘artsy’ wing of the school; a film development room, art rooms, the printers for the school paper, a pottery room. This school had an amazing number of resources. It wasn’t as nice as the fancy-pants rich school I went to for high school, but Sunnydale High was publicly funded so it was pretty amazing considering.

“Alright, I’m going to need my shirt back if I’m going to try and play with hot metal and vampire ashes in the metal shop trying to fix our little mental manipulation issue. No promises, but I’m thinking necklaces for everyone, what do you think?” I asked with what I was coming to think of as my ‘cheerful and fucking with them voice.’

Giles pulled his glasses off at my words and began to clean them, his eyes squinting slightly at me as he stared pensively. I could see the thoughts bouncing around in his head over my proclamation. If I was able to make something that could help protect from mental corruption, especially with vampire ash – a relatively abundant resource – that could be worth a lot to the Watchers.

“You can create a talisman to protect against demonic influence?” Giles asked, trying to keep the skepticism out of his voice, but failing.

To that I lifted my hand out flat and wobbled it back and forth in a ‘so-so’ gesture.

“I noticed that the silver coin you gave me – after I treated it with my own special process – is working to resist the demonic taint in the air, which is all the Hellmouth is really doing, if in a far more direct way. I was thinking of hammering the metal out flat, rolling it up into a sort of bottle, and then putting the vampire ashes I collected in it. Loop a bit of string over it to make it a necklace and then the bottle would take the mental hit before us. I got the idea from the bits of metal they use when they want to stop corrosion? The whatchamacallit?” I asked turning to Willow.

“Oh! Sacrificial anode! Or Galvanic anode! Or the reverse, Cathode protection!” she said in her happy peppy way.

Pointing to the girl who was smiling proud to herself I just said, “Yeah, that. It’s not the same. It won’t do a lick of good for someone working with magic directly and it will eventually need to be retreated and periodically refilled with ashes, but it should work well enough for just walking around near the thing. Though, I still think the council should get dedicated magical protection for each of the Scoobies. Speaking of, any chance I could study that necklace of yours?”

Giles fingered the wooden beads of his necklace, then eyed me while I just calmly lifted one eyebrow in query. I was curious, but that was mostly all it was, curiosity. Since he had to invoke some spirit for the protection, the necklace most likely was just a key or part of a pass code that made the rest of the prayer work. The magic was most likely not in the necklace itself.

“Yes, well, I need it for protection at the moment. We will see once your experiment has panned out,” Giles said before turning back to the kids and directing them to head out while he would scour his books. It was a bit funny to me that all of us turned away to give Marcie privacy with removing my shirt, even if I was the only one who could actually see her. Buffy graciously gave up a spare set of workout clothes that she kept in the backroom. I didn’t comment on the fact that at no time did anyone suggest Marcie should slip into the back to change. Giles was flipping through paperwork and had ignored the awkward teenage behavior, but the others appeared to be under the influence of embarrassment and awkwardness, amplified by the Hellmouth.

It really was a portal to a hell dimension if it was even making puberty and high school interactions more uncomfortable.

Finding a flyer among the papers stacked on his desk in the secure cage, Giles smirked as he approached with it held out to me. Glancing at the paper that he seemed to almost be threatening me with, I tilted my head in curiosity before gently snagging the paper which was a teacher’s list of school activities.

“Yes, Giles?”

“Since you are now my assistant, I thought it would be helpful if you would take up part of my duties this next Friday while I have work here in the library to attend to,” Giles said with a wide smirk, the look saying he was springing a punishment on me that I wouldn’t be able to refuse.

“Friday?” I asked, glancing down at the paper, then waving as the teens trudged out.

Friday had a school outing that stood out to me, not from the paper, but for what it meant for Xander and the principle. I hadn’t remembered what had caused Flutie’s death, but once I had the reminder of the school zoo trip to jog my memory, the episode snapped into place for me. Switching to Blue mana and swirling it around inside my mind, I tried to pull up all the details I could.

Xander and some punk kids get mind whammied because they went into the hyena exhibit while it was closed  - Xander being there to try and stop them from picking on some geek kid. They get possessed by the Primal hyena spirit that the zookeeper was trying to grab for himself. Xander makes an ass of himself and almost assaults Buffy while the other kids eat Flutie alive. Buffy and the team head back to the zoo later and the possession gets passed to the zookeeper who then pounces at Buffy and is tossed into the cage with the hyenas and dies.

I’m not sure why I couldn’t remember before how Flutie died, but I did remember that Xander pretended to not remember anything from while he was possessed. Except that he admits to Giles at the end of the episode that he does remember. Which means that the kids also remembered eating their principle.

Nightmare fuel.

I wanted to be annoyed with Giles for pushing the monitoring of the kids onto me, especially since I don’t even think he was required to go in the episode, but since it played into my own plans, I was fine with it. Of course, I couldn’t not mess with the man.

“Sounds good to me! I’ll remember to bring dark sunglasses and a water bottle full of paint thinner with me for the hyena exhibit!” I said with a cheerful smile, cherishing the confused look on the Watcher’s face.