Part I: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1096503.html
Part II: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1100922.html
Part III: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1104619.html#cutid1

“Look, all I’m saying is, we should just tell them thanks but no thanks. This isn’t the sort of thing I’m going to do. It’s not the sort of thing I can do. And besides that, well, why would I want to go to some stuffy old boarding school when I can stay here in stylish, fun Sunnydale?”

Buffy was still complaining as they loaded up Giles’ car Friday after classes, and Giles was still ignoring her.

“You tell ‘em, Buff!” Xander offered in dry parody of support. “I mean, who wants to leave Sunnydale, where the skies are sunny and the vampires are sprouting? I mean, why would you want to somewhere without demons? Oh, god, take me with you.”

“That was the idea, yes. As much as I loathe to say it, you may be quite useful on this trip, Xander. If for no other reason than being exactly what you are.”

“I’d say thanks, but I’m pretty sure that was an insult very badly pretending to be something like a compliment. Come on, Will, is that all you’re bringing?”

“Laptop, check, clothes for two days, check. What about you, Xander?” Willow set her bag in the trunk, wedged carefully between Buffy’s bags and Giles’ suitcase.

Xander held up his gym bag. “All I need. I travel light. I’m the original light-traveller. I am…”

“Forgot to pack, hunh? Do you have enough?”

“Enh, I can buy a toothbrush and some socks when we stop for gas. Funny thing, gas stations. They seem like they’re made for the unprepared.”

“Ahem, indeed,” Giles cut in. “All right, everyone in—”

“Shotgun!” Xander shouted.

“Too late, bozo, I called shotgun like hours ago.” Buffy slid into the passenger’s seat. “If I have to do this thing of ridiculousness, then I’m going to do it in style.”

“No fair! Giles, tell her that’s not fair. That’s not how the ‘shotgun’ rules work, as written in the Shotgun digest of Fourteen-oh-eight!”

“I most certainly will not. Get in the car, now, all of you.” Giles pinched his nose. “Whatever have I gotten into?”

“Did they even have shotguns in fourteen oh eight?” Willow scooted into the backseat and fastened her seatbelt.”

“It was a very progressive digest at the time.”

With that, they were off. Giles spent more than half of the first leg of the trip bemoaning his willingness to get into a car with three teenagers at all, and much of the rest of it telling Buffy that, no, she did not have a Spidey sense telling her something back in Sunnydale was going horribly wrong.

“I could patrol here, you know.” Buffy was pacing back and forth in the hotel room. They’d gotten two rooms in a place that was surprisingly high-rent for Giles’ protestations of educational poverty, Giles and Xander in one room, Buffy and Willow in theory in the other, but currently wearing a hole in the first. “There could be vampires here. There could be demons.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s magic.” Willow was sitting in lotus on what was, in theory, Xander’s bed. “It feels a lot different from Sunnydale. Funny, everything started feeling different the moment we hit the city limits.”

“Neat what not being in a Hellmouth will do for you. Why don’t we go see what they have instead of a Bronze here? Maybe a Silver or a Gold, you think?”

next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1112216.html

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