|
|
|
(This is original creative material copyright Chris Kenworthy, based on characters that he has no right to owned by someone else blah blah biddy blah...) |
|
Buffy smiled and waved at the two of them.
"Ha ha ha," Mentrog chuckled unmercifully. "Hardly. Not that I'd be unconcerned about the prospect of taking her on in a fight, but Slayers rarely dirty their hands with our kind, and that gives me sufficient peace of mind when it comes to them. Next guess?"
Tojo was visibly agitated now, to all of their dismay. "Er, uh, that is," he sputtered, then brightened again. "The sword of Kascionare!"
Mentrog burst out lauhging again. "Of course not, you simple-minded fool! We venerate and seek the sword, always. It can be deadly when used against a chaos demon, but for us to fear it would be heresy!" The chaos demon glared maliciously at his Watcher opponent. "One more guess."
"What?" Tojo exclaimed, horrified. "I may make as many guesses as I please within the llowed time!"
"Not so," Mentrog countered. "Only three. That modification to the Strictures has been in place for two years."
"A curse on those out-of-date references," Tojo muttered.
"One more guess, mortal!" Mentrog gibed him. "Then I get to take you!"
Tojo pondered for only a second. "The Alcatier Prince of the Joragi sea-devils!" he called out.
Mentrog stopped still. "Wrong," he drawled spittlesomely. He extended a hand to Tojo, and a beam of turquoise light passed between them. In a moment Mentrog was gone, and only a large elliptical mass of blue-green substance remained where Tojo had been.
"Tojo!" Willow and Buffy breathed simultaneously. "What happened to him?" Buffy asked out loud.
"He has been trapped by the Horror," Giles said sadly. "His body lies within that stasis bubble, but his mind is in the fantasy realm of the chaos demon. If he cannot defeat the demon there, he could die. But there is truly no way to help him now."
"We can get his body under cover, at least," Buffy asserted. "Xander!" Xander had come out during the fight, and was chatting quietly with Jesse's ghost.
Jesse said something, (Buffy couldn't tell what,) to Xander as soon as he recognized that she had said something to Xander, and Xander whispered something back to Jesse. Jesse responded by attempting without success to clap his hand against Xander's. "Xander!" Buffy repeated, now angry, and he rushed over and followed her out to the stasis bubble.
"You told him?" Buffy demanded incredulously as they heaved the thing up into the air. "Just like that? In front of everyone?"
"Well, yeah," Xander responded. "Come on, Buffy, he's my best friend, or at least he was. I'm not allowed to share our secrets?"
"No, you're not. And even if you were, there's a better time and place," Buffy told him off sourly as they began to move the bubble up the porch stairs.
"Okay," Buffy said aloud once they had gotten the stasis buble into the Rosenberg house. "Mister Tojo's under cover, Kendra's back... is there anything else we need to sort out right now?" She turned to Giles. "Do, uh, do you know if ghosts need to sleep?"
Giles laughed. "Probably we do, but I suspect that we'll just vanish while our spirits are resting and reappear when we wake. We shouldn't be hard to accomodate."
"Okay, anything else?" Nobody said anything. "Goo-ood," Buffy sighed, sinking down into the recliner in the Rosenberg's living room. "It's been a busy few hours."
"Do you have any idea why Ethan and your double would have tried to kidnap Kendra, Giles?" Willow asked.
"Not really," Giles admitted, sitting down on the sofa next to Jenny. (Angel had gotten moved upstairs sometime in the past few hours, Buffy realized with mild surprise.) "But it isn't hard to formulate defenses against that ectoplasmic arm and other devices to capture ghosts."
"I could teach you how to craft a few defense markers for each house, Wilow," Jenny put in.
"Do you really think that that's the best way?" Giles asked her. "Surely we could do it ourselves, using Xander or Cordelia's assistance for the physical construction."
"So, what, it's okay for you to know the spell, but not for Willow?"
"She already knows far too much of -"
"Wake up, Rupert!" Jenny snapped her fingers in front of Giles' face. "She's a watcher now! She has as much right to know this stuff as you do!!"
"She is?" Giles repeated blankly. He turned about to address Willow. "You are?"
"Apprentice watcher," Willow clarified. "Tojo's apprentice, technically, I suppose. Which means that as long as he's out of action..." Willow's face clouded up with concern.
"Don't fret, Willow," Giles assured her. "Tojo is a most resourceful man - he will win free of his demon yet. In the meantime, I suppose that makes ME your mentor, Apprentice Watcher Rosenberg!"
"Willow looked up, startled. "Really?"
"But of course. I'm not certain if Watcher perogatives usually extend beyond death, but since I'm not a vampire... er, that is, it's not me that is the vampire of me..." He shook his head, confused. "What I'm saying is, the Watchers would not object, under the circumstances. If only because they would have a hard time understanding the circumstances." He shot a joking grin at his young friend.
* * * *
After a little while, Buffy left the living room and climbed up to the second floor of the Rosenberg house. As she reached the top of the stairs, she noticed that she could hear Cordelia's voice. Carefully, Buffy crept over to the source of it, Willow's room, and listened intently.
"I don't know. It's just, for as long as this has been going on, it's like he's just not interested in me! Not even when we're pissing each other off, and I'm really mad at him, and I just feel like... well, you know... he just walks away like nothing happened!"
"Well, you know how guys can be," Willow put in awkwardly. "Sometimes they're all, well, you know, and sometimes they're just not."
"Yeah, I guess so. But I can't shake the feeling that there's something else going on. You wouldn't have any idea what it could be, would you?"
"Me?" Willow squeaked. "Um, no... er, that is..."
Buffy sighed. Willow was a bad liar, but Cordelia was so clueless that she probably wouldn't pick up on it. Still, this conversation gave her the chills. She and Xander had pretty much used up their lead time for keeping Cordelia in the dark. Too bad we didn't actually use more of it being together, Buffy thought bitterly. Tojo had better -- oh no! She hadn't thought of that before - with Tojo out of action, the 'de-witch Cordelia' timeline was going to be delayed even more. She'd better find a way to bring Giles and Miss Calendar up to speed soon.
But right now, Buffy had other things to do. She moved stealthily down the hall to the room Xander was occupying, and found that there was a conversation going on in there too!
"Oh, you're kidding me!" Jesse was saying. "You actually went all the way with CORDELIA?"
"Uh, yeah," Xander said unenthusiastically.
"And how far with this Buffy chick?"
"Um, well, uh, kissing, a little touching..."
"Oh man!" Jesse burst out. "She's got some body on her... But man, how was Cordelia? Boy, if I ever..."
"Okay, just knock it off!" Xander said. "Between you walking through stuff, and this conversation, I'm feeling like Sam Beckett here!"
"Oh, no way are you a Sam Beckett," Jesse shot back.
Buffy suddenly realized that at no point in this conversation would she be able to just open the door without embarassment, so she turned around, stalked back to the stairway, and then walked with a very loud and obvious step back over to Xander's room. The conversation broke off as she approached, and she knocked.
"Hey?" Xander's voice came out.
"Just me," Buffy called in response.
"Come in," Jesse said. She pushed the door open and poked her head in. "Am I interrupting anything?"
"Not, uh, really," Jesse said. "Did, uh, did you guys want to be alone?"
Buffy stepped the rest of the way into the room. "Um, no, er, that is... yeah, kind of. But we really do need to get to know each other soon, Jesse, now that you're back. We were almost friends when I first came to town - I'd like the chance to make it the rest of the way there."
"Cool." Jesse stood up and walked through the wall.
"So, how much did you miss me?" Xander asked playfully, crawling over to sit beside her on the bed.
"Hey," Buffy blurted out, shifting ten inches away from him.
"Hey, what? Quick."
"No, no quick," Buffy frowned at him. "Cordelia, getting suspicious now, grilling Willow down the hall to find out what's wrong with you lately!"
"So? You know, that's probably the best way to let her find out."
"Come on, Xander. You know there is NO best way to let her find out - not until someone's managed to de-witch her."
"Oh, okay. Well, if it wasn't for that, why did you want me all to yourself?"
"To talk to you as a friend?"
Xander did a double-take as he realized how he had been acting. "Oh. Okay, I can do that. What is it?"
"It's about the whole Tojo thing." Xander looked at her questioningly. "I can't help feeling like it's all my fault."
"Your fault? Why?"
"You know. Just this afternoon I was wishing that I could have Giles back instead of Mister Tojo. Now - what do you know? I got my wish. I feel awful about it."
"Hey, come on, Buffy!" Xander shook her shoulder comfortingly. "This is not your fault. You did what you had to do, to help out Giles and other people. Tojo had some bad luck in a fight and got into trouble. None of this is your fault."
"Hmm," Buffy said. "You sure?" She smiled up at him cutely.
"Positive."
"Okay. Then we had better go find Giles and Jenny, ask them to help with de-witching Cordelia."
|
|
|
|
