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(This is original story written by Chris Kenworthy, based on the Buffy characters, who he does not own etcetera etcetara...)
Generally, to enter the Midnight house, or more precisely to leave with your heart still beating, you needed to be involved in unsavory dealings and posessed of criminal connections. It was partly a recreational lounge for the scoundrels of the south Himalayan foothills, and partly a place of meeting where business was done between such rogues.
Which was what made it so remarkable that a gorgeous young woman, fair of skin, was heading straight for the front door of the pub. Her hair was straight and a rich nutty amber-brown, falling past her shoulders, and she was wearing a black silky dress that showed off her curvaceous figure.
As the girl walked towards the Midnight house, she could detect an odor about the premises - a smell which infensified a hundredfold when she opened the door. There was the scent of poorly washed sweaty bodies, the unmistakeable funk of poor-quality beer malt, the sharp tinge of spilled vodka and other liquors, as well as the fragrance of a few powders that could be less easily identified. The girl shook them off and walked calmly into the main room of the bar.
The patron's seating area was half-filled with various disreputable-looking characters, which might have seemed odd considering that there was but two hours until sunrise. The young woman wasn't surprised at all. She simply evaluated the clientele - mostly humans native to this area, but there were three or four vampires, a nasty-looking mantiger, and an individual with reddish markings on his face that looked almost demonish in nature.
She turned away from them all and went up to the bartender. "Umm, excuse me," she said very nervously. "Do you speak English?"
The bartender and the cashier exchanged a sidelong glance, and the bartender spoke out loud a few words in Urdu. The pretty girl looked blank and went "Huh?"
With that, the bartender switched into guttural English. "I do not speak the english so good," he confessed. "What is your name?"
"Laurie," the girl told him. "I'm looking for Uzta."
The bartender and the cashier both broke out into helpless laughter at that thought. "Uzta?" the cashier repeated in a thin, reedy voice. "What would a girl like you want to meet Uzta for?"
'Laurie' struck a provocative pose that emphasized her impressive bosom and feminine hips. "What do you think, little one?"
The cashier shot the bartender an impressed look. "Little bit of tail wants to see the freak-man," he told his buddy in the Urdu language.
"If she goes to the freak-man, her priceless body would go to waste," the bartender replied in the same tongue.
"Do you suppose we might be able to persuade her to stay here and have a bit of fun with us, instead of going to Uzta?" the cashier asked rhetorically. Switching back to English, he addressed the 'little bit of tail' again. "I am afraid that you are not Uzta's type. It would be a waste of your time."
"But, to console you for the disappointment, I have something very special for you," the bartender continued, starting to mix up a drink. "On the house. I promise. No payment."
Laurie frowned. "Well, I have friends. Maybe one of them is Mister Uzta's type." She pounded ringingly on the bar, creating a hollow thump that would certainly echo out from beyond the building.
Everybody was now paying attention, and each of the heads in the bar turned towards the front door to see who would enter. The door was pulled open, and a dusky-skinned gentleman and handsome young European man entered. The cashier and the bartender turned curious glares on Laurie. "I do not think Mister Uzta's tastes run to men," the bartender told her.
"Not them," Laurie spat, as the older man came up to the other side of the bar and asked for two of something or other - speaking in Hindi. "Them," Laurie declared. Another party was entering the Midnight house - three young and very pretty girls: one with mid-golden brown hair, wearing Western clothes - tight dark blue trousers and a clingy green shirt that seemed to fit like skin. The next had quite dark, straight hair, and wore a very old-fashioned black smock. The hair of the last one was reddish-gold, quite short, going down to her neck at the back and clipped around the ears. She wore a green and yellow sari.
"Well well now," the bartender whispered in Urdu. "This has just become a party!"
"See if you can get them all to drink, with the sleeping draught in it," the cashier prompted. "If not, we're gonna have to take them by surprise. This is too good a chance to pass up."
"You think you can?" 'Laurie' said in Urdu, suddenly whipping out a short, sharp blade, a foot and a half long and curved into about an eighth of a circular arc. Within an instant, that sword was at the neck of the cashier.
The bartender jumped back in shock, then reached for a pole arm he kept behind the bar. He never got a chance to use that weapon. The dusky-skinned man suddenly had a pistol crossbow out and was pointing it at the bartender's heart. Some of the patrons seemed to have the idea of interfering, but noticing that the dusky man's young man friend and Laurie's three girlfriends had also suddenly become armed or dangerous, or both, the customers decided to let their impulse go.
"Now, we came here with a simple request," Laurie announced loudly in Urdu. "We just wanted to find Mister Uzta. Instead, you conspire to take advantage of myself and my friends. So, now, we're gonna do this a different way. Where can we find the man we seek?"
Neither of them spoke, and Laurie pressed the blade into the cashier's neck, drawing a slight trace of blood. "Halfway up Reyar's mountain," he finally choked out in the same tongue, "on the southeast face, there is a wooden shack. At midnight, you can find the freak-thing in or outside that dwelling."
"Fine." Laurie took the blade away, watching for any signs of an attack.
"Did we get what we came for, Lora?" one of the other girls asked, in English.
"Yeah, we got it, Buffy," Laurie/Lora Theron answered. As she backed away, Franco Belone moved to cover both the bartender and the cashier with his crossbow, while Willow, Marea, Angel, Lora, and Buffy Summers left the pub. Franco took up the rear.
* * * *
"Yeah, a good night's work," Buffy said. She was in Elysium again - like always, it seemed. "We've got the address to find this Uzta guy Mister Franco told us all about." Franco Belone turned out to be an excellent addition to Buffy's team at this point, given that her current assignment was to take down the Order of Taraka. Franco was an expert on the Order - had been studying it for decades. Franco and Marea had been tracking down a Tarakan when they met up in England, Buffy remembered. It seemed that they had been doing that sort of thing more often than not ever since Marea had been called as a Vampire Slayer.
Which sounded kinda weird to Buffy, but then again, Buffy herself had bashed a lot of baddies that weren't vampires herself in her time. Whatever threatened the peace in Sunnydale. And that was something that kinda puzzled Buffy, too. As a Slayer, she had basically just stayed where she was - L.A., Sunnydale, Limbo... and waited for big evil to find her. But Marea, who was as young or younger than Buffy, had been going out and looking for evil, tracking bad guys all across Europe. Buffy'd have to ask Giles about that.
"So, who is he, Buffy?" Xander asked. "Uzta??"
"He's a hunter with the Order of Taraka," Buffy told him. "The rumors say that he's a Splicer - that he's a combination of human and non-human through strange magic. That's not really important one way or the other, though. The critical point is that he's the leader of a faction of disaffected Tarakans who might be willing to work against the Order."
"Why would they do that?" Jenny asked. "From everything I know about the Order of Taraka, they're fanatically loyal."
"Because that's required of them," Buffy said. "Right, Willow?"
"Yeah," Willow corroborated. "Taraka and his high elders don't allow even the smallest sign of disrespect - that's grounds for execution. Which might work in our favor. The disaffected Tarakans know that they'll have to destroy the Hierarchy keeping the Order together if they want to be free."
"Which is exactly what you have to do, Buffy," Oz said with a lazy smile. "But why would they want to be free so bad anyway? I mean, going up against the rest of the Order with you - that's deeply dangerous. You have to bring the Order down..."
"It's a dangerous time to be a part of the Order, though," Buffy told Oz. "Because of me, actually. They swore their mark of blood vengance against me, so they have to keep trying to kill me. But, between me and my friends, we've beaten every assasination party they've sent our way. Nobody wants to be next, but if Taraka taps you to go on an assignment, it isn't safe to say no."
"Okay," Jenny said with a smile. "So, you're gonna meet with this Uzta?"
"Yeah," Buffy agreed. "Tomorrow, at midnight. Probably gonna see if we can meet some of his buddies, too - I'll get a better notion of if I can trust them if I can meet them as a group. So, how is everything going in Sunnydale, Xander?"
"Pretty well," Xander said, smiling at his, (somewhat long-lost,) girlfriend. "The Resistance has sent us a few messages, but we haven't had an opportunity to meet up with them again since that first night."
"And how's working at the Bronze?"
"As calm and quiet as can be expected when you're waiting tables for vampires," Xander told her with a wry smile.
* * * *
"Okay, what'll you have?" Cordelia asked, trying to keep her stomach from flipping over.
"Bloody Mary for me - make that with the cow's blood," one vampire requested.
"Pig's blood, straight up." "Ah, what the hell - give me a black magic."
"I got a few fangs to spend," the fourth vampire declared, dropping down a few golden tokens onto the table - the ones the Fireking used for rationing privileges in short supply to the vampire populace here in Sunnydale. "How much for a drink fresh from the neck of that blonde over there?"
Cordy felt like she was going to vomit. "Um, s-six f... f-fangs," she stuttered.
"Good." He counted the six out for her. "Bring her over here." Cordelia put the tokens into her work pouch and headed over to Alina. She hated this part of the job - telling someone that they were about to be bitten by a vampire, and that there was nothing Cordelia or anyone in the Bronze could do to stop it. At least Alina wouldn't die. This vampire hadn't paid enough to kill her.
Oh, my god, how can we keep doing this, Cordelia wondered to herself.
Suddenly someone new came through the door. Hushed conversation greeted the newcomer, and as Cordelia caught a glimpse, she could see why. It was Michelle LeBlanc - the vampire girl who had once been the lackey of Queen Kaliya. After being changed in some mysterious way by the Fireking, she was now among the chiefest of his officers - one of the original Council of the Dead. As such, she ranked everyone in the club by probably at least two orders of magnitude in the vampire hierarchy in Sunnydale - Cordelia didn't see any Captains here tonight. Just the favored, the important, and the legion. And the humans, of course, lowest of the low in the eyes of all vampires.
"I have come for Harris," Michelle announced theatrically. "Xander Lavelle Harris. Bring him to me!"
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