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by Chris Kenworthy (scoobyhq@fcmail.com)
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters that you recognize from the Buffy television show and don't make money off of them.
"Hey!" one of them called out, pointing a pistol at Cole.
"I'm just wanting to help," Cole said. "Do you really want him to die?"
The guy who had challenged him, a tough guy in a private-eye costume, considered that a moment. For an instant it seemed that his face was different, inhuman. But he turned to look nervously at the manager's office and when he looked back to Cole his face was normal again. "What are you going to do?"
Like Cole was gonna tell him! "Just examine him, try to bandage the wound, okay?"
The vampire nodded. "Keep it quiet," he warned Cole. "If he dies, I didn't see you."
"If he dies, I wasn't here?" Cole asked in return. Obviously the ringleaders of this operation really didn't want any of them to die if it could be prevented - conspiracy to murder charges, probably.
Cole looked quickly around to see if anyone else was paying attention to him. Nobody seemed to be, though there were too many people in the area for his liking. He had never used his talent in public before, had always felt that he had to keep it a secret both for his own sake and to make sure that he could still put his gift to good use. Sometimes he hardly believed it himself, when it was a long time since he'd done it. It had been two months this time.
He didn't want to do it now, not when anyone could look around and maybe see what he was doing. But if he didn't, what of this likeable young guy, the same age as Cole himself, Buffy's friend, dressed up as John Steed to Willow Rosenberg's Emma Peel, whose only mistake had been being protective of his date. Without the kind of help that Cole alone could provide, he might well die.
Cole nerved himself and probed into the wound. Fairly neat and clean, he sensed - the bullet had passed through without leaving any fragments behind, which was very good. Some muscle tearing, though, and blood was being lost at a substantial rate. No traditional bandaging would staunch it - the blood was leaking into his abdomen as well as out onto the floor. Cole would have to do what only he could do.
He extended himself along the probe, healing the wound. He wished he could clean up the blood that had leaked into Xander's insides, restore the spilled blood or replace it, but his talents didn't reach that far. But he could heal the deep damage that had ripped the muscle walls apart and restore the daamged vessels so that there would be no more bleeding. Not completely - he left some surface bleeding untouched, so that the healed wound wouldn't look suspicious, and tore off the sleeve of his Rhett Butler jacket to bandage that. "Thank you, junior bio," he murmured to himself. His healing 'talents' had manifested when he took that class - when he understood enough about human anatomy to visualize what he was doing, he figured. He still didn't understand where the power came from, just that he felt he had to use it to help the wounded and to keep it secret.
Well, that was as much as he could do here. "Hey!" he called out softly, shaking the guy by the shoulder. "You feeling okay?"
"Ungh, not really."
"I'm Cole Palmer," Cole said conversationally. "Hell of a dance, huh?"
"Xander Harris," the guy muttered in reflex self-introduction. "Cole? Cordelia's new..."
Then Cole remembered - Xander had been Cordelia's semi-secret boyfriend for the past two terms. "Uh, yeah. No hard feelings there, I hope."
"No," Xander groaned. "Hard feelings on my head, but nowhere else." Cole quickly slipped around and put the rest of his jacket under Xander's head as a cushion. "Where's Buffy?"
Cole looked around on reflex, but couldn't see Buffy's costume anywhere. "Did something..." he whispered to Xander, already fearing the answer.
"She tried something after I was shot - I'm not sure what. Got hit with something, sounded like, and headed off over there." Xander pointed to the doorway just past the stairs.
"I'll go find her," Cole promised him, and took off. This healer's work isn't done yet, he told himself soberly.
(Up in the catwalks,)
"They're all staying in the main room," Faith observed in a whisper. "Or in the management office - that may be their command center in there."
"Probably," Jonny noticed. "They're actually smart not to post sentries further out - they know we could take their people out one by one that way."
"So, what do we do now?" Faith asked him.
"We observe more and look for an opening or a weak point," Jonny suggested. "There's no time pressure yet, no reason we have to act right now."
"Urrgh," Faith grumbled. "I hate waiting."
"I know, babe," Jonny told her. "But it's all we can do, right now. We try to make a move now and we'd just get shot."
"I just wish I could go look for Buffy," Faith said. "Are you sure there's no way into those passages from here?"
"Well, there might be," Jonny admitted. "Just don't try sneaking out them windows or anything, honey - I think they're electrified."
"Okay," Faith said, smiling. "Off I go, Miss Kitty," she quipped. And leaned forward to kiss Jonny on the mouth.
Jonny smiled back at her. "What was that for?"
"A thank-you. And to say I'm glad that you're here."
"Nothing else?"
Faith considered. "That's all for now. Once we get out of this squeeze, we'll see." And she was off.
(Up on the stage.)
"Uh, hi," Julia Sullivan said to Robbie as she slid over to sit next to him.
"Oh, hi there!" Oz said, taking his hand away from his sore jaw. "Uh, it's Leslie, right?"
"Uh, yeah!" she said, nodding and smiling briefly.
"Nice to meet you," Oz said without enthusiasm.
"I guess we're not going to have a chance to dance," Leslie said, "but I just wanted to tell you that I loved that song, and I don't understand why that bozo punched you out."
"You don't?" Oz said, unconvinced. "But you know, about Willow and me, and him, don't you?" Leslie shook her head. "Because of... that's why you came as Julia, isn't it?"
Leslie was looking very confused now. "I came as Julia because I loved that movie and people tell me I look like Drew, why?"
Oz turned things over in his mind. "Nobody told you I would be coming as Robbie?"
"Nope!"
Maybe it was the other way around, Oz thought. Buffy had heard Leslie would be using this costume and set me up to match her... but that would mean that it had all been planned out long before Willow made her formal choice. Oz shook his head in confusion. He couldn't make sense of things... but it could hardly be coincidence that he be thrown together with the second most Willowlike girl in Sunnydale on the night that Willow himself was dating another guy. Or could it? Stranger things had happened, he supposed... this was the Hellmouth after all...
"Boy, these guys creep me out," Leslie said softly to him. "Have you seen their faces, when they don't think anyone's watching? It's gross - like they're mutants or something."
Oz weighed pros and cons. "Not mutants exactly," he muttered, and got ready to tell Leslie Decowski the facts of Sunnydale life...
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