Archive | July 2016

The Hellmouth Job, Chapters 9 & 10 (A Leverage/Buffy Fanfic)

Jul13

Part I
Part Ia
Part II
Part III
Chapters 7 & 8

The Intersection

“Look, I can help you.” Hardison’s voice was rising in panic. “Just tell me what stores you see.”

Parker looked around. “Nearest intersection has a… Cobalt jewelry and a Costello ice cream. Big fountain thing. No skylight.”

“Cobalt, Costello. Check. Man that’s a big mall. It’s almost like… well, okay. Elliot?”

“Sec.” Elliot had taken advantage of the situation to bash the man’s head into the floor twice. He gave the guy one more heavy thunk. “Yo. One down. No cameras, no mirrors… here comes another one. Parker?”

“Ready.” She was smiling. Of course she was.

“So,” Hardison mused over their earpieces, “is this why the mall is empty, or is someone trying to send us a message? Are we getting too close?”

Elliot slammed his fist into their attacker’s jaw while Parker swept low and kicked his legs out from under him. He went down, and three more came around the corner.

“Too close?” Elliot punctuated his complaint with a roundhouse kick. “We haven’t gotten anywhere yet. You’ve been watching too much TV again, man.”

“These guys are strong,” Parker commented idly. She was around one’s neck, thighs around his throat.

“Parker, you hang upside down from buildings by your fingers,” Hardison pointed out. “I’ve got the infrared, but I think it’s broken. Man, what kind of mall has infrared security?”

“You know, this is why Sunnydale doesn’t have any visitors.” A perky voice complained from the sidelines. “We get some nice scruffy, scary-looking men and bam, someone attacks them.”

“Scruffy?” Elliot snarled. “Who’re you calling scruffy?”

“Who’re you calling a man?” Parker countered. “Man, does this man need to breathe, or what?”

“Probably not.” A blonde girl stepped out of the shadows. “And they’re not very friendly, are they?”

“Perfectly,” Elliot punched one attacker in the solar plexus, “Fine.”

“Ooh, you’re something, but you’re out of your league here, soldier boy.” She bounced into the fray with a spin kick, shoving the third attacker away from Elliot.

“I’ve got this,” he grunted. “…and don’t…” He twisted the man’s arm until it broke, “call me that.”

“He’s not a soldier,” Parker offered cheerfully. She hadn’t managed to asphyxiate her target, but neither had he managed to get her off of him. “He’s with us.”

The newcomer didn’t even raise an eyebrow at the apparent non sequitur. “You’re good, both of you. But these things don’t breathe and they don’t fall down.” She punctuated the last by shoving a large wooden stick through the ribcage of one of the attackers. “Unless you know how to hit them. “

The assailant fell apart in a cloud of ash. The woman twisted around, repeating the move with the second attacker. She looked up as Parker whistled; she was holding out her hand. “Gimme?”

“Don’t miss.” The new girl tossed the piece of wood to Parker in a low underhand toss; Parker caught it, bent over backwards, and shoved it through her target’s back while she flipped off of him. He vanished in a puff as she landed.

“That was fun! Do you get to do that all the time around here?”

“P… Alisha,” Eliot snarled. He turned his glare on the newcomer before Parker could even blink. “What the hell were they and who the hell are you.”

“Also thank you,” Parker offered. “What?” She looked between the two of them staring at her. “N… Mr. Boss says we ought to be polite, and… Mrs. Boss agrees.”

“Who am I? I think a better question is ‘who are you and what are you doing here?’”

Elliot sighed. “Shoulda sent someone else,” he grumbled, mostly to Hardison. “Right. Thank you.” He looked at the stick still in Parker’s hand, and the small piles of ash on the ground. “What falls apart like that? I’ve fought some weirder people, and some even weirder shit, but nothing that falls apart like that.”

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No.” Elliot didn’t so much answer as snarl it. “We’re from Boston.”

The Introduction

“Buffy, where did you go, there’s shoes to be bought…”

“Buffy, help, Cordelia is trying to make me have an opinion!”

Cordelia and Xander skidded to a stop as they reached Buffy and the two strangers.

“Oh, ick.” Cordelia frowned. “Did you find more of your freaky little friends? Is this the new Kendra? Because seriously, one of you is enough.” Cordelia wrinkled her nose.

“I can still take back the offer for shoes, you know.” Buffy turned her attention to the strangers. “You’re not from around here, you fight like pros… who are you?”

The blonde woman — blonde acrobat, Buffy thought, although next Slayer was not a bad guess — waved cheerfully. “We’re here to join the youth group!”

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Making Fertile Soil – a story for the Summer Giraffe Call Round Two

Jul13


Written to [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘ prompt here to my Summer Giraffe Call Round 2.

Planet names from – http://www.scifiideas.com/planet-generator/

“Pereira! What in hell are you doing?” Captain Klerkx came around the corner of the tower, glaring at her 2-I-C. “This isn’t a farming planet, this is a military base.”

Sage Pereira straightened up. “And because it’s a long-term military position, Captain, I have two days of leave a week and an extra three days of leave a month. I’m not on the duty roster today.”

“Don’t you rules-and-regulations me, Commander. What are you doing?”

“Well, look.” Sage stretched and stood. “The soil here isn’t good for much, but I did a pH test — I’ve got the supplies, bought from the commissary on the trip over, so not using site supplies — and it’s within range for terran plants. And we have that little pen of livestock—”

“And how did that get past regulations?”

“Well, you see, Captain,” Sage let herself smile a bit. Captain Klerkx had the years in the service and the experience, but none of it was on military posts like this one, in the ass end of nowhere. “Doing post work comes with bonuses, you know. And they also come with weight bonuses when we move, because we’re expected to settle like we’re going to be here a long time. And when Sgt. Bermúdez was on leave between stationings, he found a place on Azrail that had these pig-mutations that are really space-happy and eat waste food. Real pork tastes a lot better than the fake stuff, you know. Then Lt. Dragić got the idea in her head, and the things she found on Gerodin aren’t quite goats, but they work like goats and humans can eat them — and they do the whole wool-and-milk thing pretty well. And they make shit, of course.”

“Excuse me?”

“They shit. They have waste products. So, back when we were setting up the base on Caracalla, we figured out that when we penned them in one area for a while, and them moved them on and turned the soil over — well, it’s not rocket science, it’s ancient agriculture. Anyway, hydroponics are good and all, but after the power went out for a week on Caracalla, let me tell you, you’re glad for something that requires sun and rain and work-hours and nothing else.”

“You’re using modified pig shit —”

“And proto-goat shit, Captain,” Pereira inserted helpfully.

“…to grow…?”

“Beans and potatoes, carrots and squash. I hope. And a couple rows of grain for now, more later.”

“And what happens when you’re transferred?” Military bases had a set-up time with full complements of staff, but eventually they were cycled down to skeleton staff when the automations were all established.

“Well, Captain, this is my third garden.” Pereira knew she looked good for her age, but she was probably a decade older than the Captain. “I hear my last two are much appreciated by the long-term staff. On Caracalla, they even imported their own pig-likes.”

The Captain blinked a few times. Assuming the discussion must be over, Sage went back to turning over the fresh, wet organic matter into the dry Claudian soil.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1141247.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Landing Page: Unicorn/Factory

Jul13

A new setting, Unicorn/Factory colors an early industrial world, where the ravages of rampant production are being held off by unicorns.

This story has some dark themes – not just pollution, corruption, and the clash of industrialization & farming, but also the very real costs paid by the farming towns. It also encompasses, in some stories, rape and forced pregnancy, maiming, and murder.

Best Places to Start
Down the River
The Silver Road (LJ)
Preconceptions

Down the River
Talking it to Death (LJ)

Duty after she’s gone to the river…

Chased/t
Unicorn Chase (LJ)
Unicorn-Chased (LJ)
Unicorn-Chaste (LJ)

The Silver Road (LJ)
Pure as… (LJ)
Making Harvest Wreathes (LJ)
Red Roses and White [No X post, Donor Perk]
Preconceptions
The Grey Line (and on LJ)
Observed (no x-post, Donor Perk)
Productive (LJ)
The Governors (LJ)
Right and Wrong (LJ)
Cleaning House (LJ)
Observing (LJ)

Other Bits
Take Me (LJ) Depression & the unicorns
Far Weston (LJ) A new City
Unicorn Hair (LJ)

The Rebellion
The Problem (LJ)
Unicorn Bride Rebellion, Part I (LJ)

Strange Unicorns
The Black Unicorns of Cardenborn (LJ)
The Unicorn’s Gift After The Black Unicorns
Change (LJ)
Strange (LJ)

Stroked
Stroke the Unicorn (LJ)
Unicorn Strokes (LJ)
Unicorn Truths (LJ)

The Black Bean (LJ)

5 Things You’ll Never Meet, by cluudle

No Unicorn, by rix_scaedu

February World-Building Q9
February World-Building Q24
February World-Building Q27
Three Weeks for Worldbuilding – The Governors in Unicorn/Factory (no xpost)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/143643.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Craft Fest Craft Fest (Our trip to CornHill Arts Festival)

Jul13

This past weekend, we did almost nothing on the house – except plant one small squash plant, after clearing and turning over and weeding and hauling dirt into and weed-clothing sufficient area of our squash patch to let it spread (hey, it’s been a slow summer for gardening).

But we did go to a craft festival. Corn Hill Arts Festival is one of the biggest and best festivals in Rochester, and one that has been going on for a very long time (I first went with my parents, when it was a more hippy-feeling event and I was much smaller).

Back when we lived in Rochester, T and I went to many (not all: almost impossible) of the craft festivals in the area, but it’s been several years since we’ve driven back up for one (It’s about a 2-hour drive each way). It was nice to go back, and I think the break did us good. I felt far less jaded; there were many many new things, and even the trendy-thing-with-too-many-booths was new to us.

And we bought things! We did not buy wall art, because oh dear gods, the wall art I wanted cost too much. But I got a new mug! And some new earrings and a new bracelet (fork!) and a small piece of art and… *breathes* OH YEAH a fairy door.

Pics of the fairy door when we install it on Grandmother Maple. For now: My fancy new mug.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1140666.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Grasp the Nettle – a ficlet of Addergoole Yr10 for the Summer Giraffe Call

Jul13


Written to [personal profile] chanter_greenie‘ prompt here to my Summer Giraffe Call Round 2

The hallways had been loud and dark all morning. Circia had hidden in her room with her plants and her Biology homework and tried to ignore it. There’d been one time where someone pounded on her door, but she’d shouted “go away,” ignoring the pounding echoing in her head, and nobody else had bothered her.

Now it was nearly dinner time, and Circia found herself both hungry and craving sunlight. Sun was hard to get around here, but if she could make her way to the grotto… Tigg had enjoyed showing her the broad indoor garden, walking her around it, telling her all about the plants. He was a nice guy, if a little too intent on visiting her every day. She wondered if it had been him knocking on her door. Well, he was just going to have to learn about the word “no.”

She hardly noticed the thistles trailing like vines behind her, or the way they wrapped the outside of her door. Somehow, they seemed natural. And, once she had made it into the grotto, it seemed natural that they, like her, would reach up for the sky and the strange indoor sunlight.

When they found her in there, several hours later, Tigg was still complaining of the swelling in his hands. “Isn’t the saying ‘grasp the nettle?’”

Circia barely heard him. Her feet were deep in the dirt and her prickers had all settled into place. The fake sun was warm enough on her face, and she could feel the whole grotto through her vines.

She opened her eyes slowly, to find Professor Valerian, Professor Fridmar, and Tigg staring at her. “I think I’ll stay here for a while,” she informed them sleepily.

The professors, in turn, studied the prickly vines Circia had woven around the carnivorous trees and strange plants that made up the grotto. “Yes. I think you will,” Professor Valerian agreed. Tigg’s whining aside, she thought no-one here would want to grasp this nettle, let alone firmly.

“Poor Regine,” she murmured to Fridmar, as they left Circia to her sun and her dirt. “And poor your students. They do so hate it when they come with natural weaponry.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1140457.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Lady Taisiya’s 4th Husband, Chapter 2 – a fantasy/romance fdomme story

Jul11

Chapter 2 in my answer to the “guy has umpteen wives” trope
Find Chapter 1 here.

Lady Taisiya’s estate sat between Sefton’s parents’ estate and the sea. This put it in a prime spot – a bargaining position his mother and her husbands had spoken of when they thought younger ears weren’t listening. It was shorter and squatter than the place Sefton had called home. Sefton looked over the whitewashed walls and the way it seemed to stretch out over the sandy grass. It was different, but it might be lovely.

Sefton had only a moment to look at it before his Lady — his new wife, his new minder, until he or she died — was steering him towards the front door. “You know what you must do?” she murmured, softly enough that no-one else could possibly overhear.

He was grateful for that. The next part, he had been told by all of his mother’s husbands, was hard. It was harder, he’d been told, the younger you were, and the more junior you were. Sefton could not imagine it being more difficult than the terror he felt right now. Still, if Lady Taisiya had needed to force him or even guide him through the motions, he might not have born to look at his co-husbands.

“I know, my lady.” He pitched his voice as softly as she had. Then they were at the threshold and there was no time for more words.

She stripped off his wedding robes — made easy to remove for just this purpose — and gave him a gentle push towards the door. Sefton swallowed and dropped to his knees.

“Keep your head down.” his father had told him; ““Keep your back straight. And keep moving until you are told to stop.”

It was easy to have heard. It was a lot harder to crawl, one hand in front of the other, one knee in front of the other, naked, across the stone tile that made up Lady Taisiya’s entryway. It was harder when he could see the feet, one bare pair after another, the first one with the chains no more than decorative shackles not linked together.

Lady Taisiya had paced him, even with pausing to take off her own boots and wash her feet by the door. Now she took her place to the left of her first husband. “Into our home you come, Feltian, now of Stonewall.” Three more voices joined hers, deep and resonant. “Part of our home you become.”

He bent his head over her feet. Now it was required that he speak. His throat was dry and felt tight and clogged. “Into your house I come. Part of Stonewall I become.” He put his lips to her feet.

She rested her hand on his head. “Junior you come in, as each new husband joins us. Will you obey, Feltian-Husband?”

“I will obey.”

He moved through the ritual, crawling down the line to each husband in turn. When he reached Lady Taisiya’s third husband, he was startled to see that his shackles were still linked with chain.

Sefton swallowed. Lady Taisiya had last married more than three years ago. He fought his way through the lines, noticing with some panic how amused this man sounded when he asked if Sefton would obey.

He had no choice, not really. He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t fight back. Men who fought back… well, bad things happened. He’d heard stories, although none of his mother’s husbands had ever fought.

“I will obey,” he agreed, and touched his forehead to the floor.

“Onter, take Feltian to his room. Welcome him to the family and prepare him for me.”

“Yes, Wife Taisiya.” His voice was deep, and it had the stilted sound of people who only speak formally in the middle of ceremonies. Sefton held still. He hadn’t been told to move yet.

“Come, Feltian. We will prepare you.”

That was the end of the ceremonial words. After this, all Sefton knew is that he was to follow Onter. He swallowed and hurried along on all fours after his new brother-husbands.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1139741.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Finish It! Bingo Card

Jul11

I’m filling this in slowly from the below list, but this is my [community profile] allbingo card for the “Finish It” challenge.

Rin’s parents, and Rin’s father, and …
(II)		 Carrying the Spirit.
(V)		 Arisse and Chress (V) Take Me (V) The Hazards of Magic (V) Fated (III) Edally (α)
Robbie meets Radar (V) B is for Beryl and her Boys.
(VI)		 How The Family Does things (IV) Fifty Years. (I) King(maker) Cake.
(III)		 Aetheric Cleansing. (II) Novella(α)
You’d Better Watch Out. (IV) Rin & Girey (V) Unicorn-Chaste (I) Discovery (IV) The Enemy’s City (IV) Æ is for Ash. (II) Landing Pages (3 big) (α)
The Portal Closed (III) Bjorn (I) Mikary (III) Over the Wall (IV) The Cat’s Paw. (III) Far Weston. (VI) Ghost Story I(α)
Daxton and Esha (II) Jin (III):
Hostage Situation		 A Locked Chest is Locked for a Reason (VI) Wild Card(IV) Legacy Cat (VI) Charming (I) Kickstarter(α)
The Strength (VI) Shahin and Emrys (VI) Unicorn Strokes (II) Gremlins/Junie’s kidnapping (I) Aetheric Cleansing. (I) Three Glass Beads, Peacock Blue (II) Submission(α)

working on completed next Partial Finish

At any point, I may sub out one of these for another suggested one or something else I need to finish.

The numbers (those that remain) correspond to the list below. This was arranged from the [community profile] allbingo public card, your suggestions, and Random.org’s list randomizer.

The Roman numerals are another way of getting a bingo – do, say, all of the (I) instead of a line or a square or such.

see links here – http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1197753.html

The list
1 Gremlins
2 Unicorn Strokes.
3 Mikary: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/507478.html
4 How The Family Does things — at resting point/chapter break, but there could be more.
5 Robbie meets Radar, discussed in comments.
6 B is for Beryl and her Boys.
7 Unicorn-Chaste.
8 Rin’s parents, and Rin’s father, and …

9 Jin and the hostage situation: how did he nab the guy long-distance, and what fallout came from it to Jin or anyone else?
10 Over the Wall
11 Carrying the Spirit.
12 Shahin and Emrys
13 Fifty Years.
14 Æ is for Ash.

15 King(maker) Cake.
16 Wild Card.
17 Rin and Girey, and more Rin, with research.
18 A Locked Chest is Locked for a Reason.
19 Charming.
20 Three Glass Beads, Peacock Blue.
21 Fated.
22 The Enemy’s City.

23 Take Me

24 Legacy Cat.
25 Aetheric Cleansing.
26 Space Accountant: A Reason – and Accidental, and bunking arrangements, etc (Genique got Married?) – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1092113.html

27 The Portal Closed.
28 Discovery.
29 The Hazards of Magic.
30 The Strength.
31 Bjorn: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/566245.html
32 Daxton and Esha
33 The Cat’s Paw.
34 You’d Better Watch Out.
35 Arisse and Chress
36 Far Weston.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1103171.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Buffy: the Invitation (an Addergoole Crossover), Part VIII

Jul8

Buffy: The Invitation

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
Part IV: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1108537.html
Part V: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1112216.html
Part VI: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1124762.html
Part VII: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1134781.html

Help! I’d like clever individual titles for these chapters as well – now taking suggestions for all 8!

Giles pulled the car to a stop on the side of the barely-paved road, very slowly put the car in park, and twisted in his seat to stare at Xander.

Willow and Buffy had already turn to do the same.

“Xander!” Willow broke what was threatening to become an unpleasant silence. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Indeed.” Giles coughed. “The time for this information would have been several days ago, Xander. What if we hadn’t brought you along?”

“Look, guys, it’s no big, okay? So some fancy school wants me — for whatever reason, probably a glitch in their system anyway…”

“From what I have heard of Regine Avonmorea, nothing in her presence would dare to do something like ‘glitch’.”

“Yeah, Giles’ books says she’s a real hardcore accuracy nut. Got in some arguments with some other scientists… I mean. If I had been reading Giles’ books or anything.”

“When we return home, Willow, we will have some conversations about your propensity for breaking into places uninvited.” Giles cleared his throat. “Regardless. Xander…?”

“Hey, no need to bring it back to me yet, I mean, Buffy might still want to get her kicks in, right, Buff? Your turn to yell at me?”

Buffy shook her head slowly. “I got nothing.”

“Come on, Buffster, surely you want to yell at me a little? I mean, I’ve been yelling at you since you got back. Just a little scream? Some witty quips? Anything?”

“Sorry, Xander, you’re just gonna have to answer the question.”

“You don’t look sorry. Does she look sorry to you, Willow?”

Willow tried her best to frown at Xander. “You’re on your own here, buster.”

“Darnit. Maybe I could just…”

“Xander.” Giles’ voice was uncharacteristically harsh. “Now.”

“Aw man… look. Fancy school. Fancy, expensive school. There’s no way my parents can pay for something like that, and I’m a horrible student anyway.”

“You’re not that bad,” Willow offered loyally. “You just don’t really care.”

“Yeah, well, why should a fancy school waste time on ‘doesn’t care’ me? So I threw the invitation out.”

“Xander!” Willow glared at him. “And you didn’t say anything?”

“Look, Will. Two things. One, you really need to get out of Sunnydale. Two, Buffy could use a break. But someone has to stay home and clean up the mess, right? And really, I’m not that good at school, and… no way to pay.”

Giles cleared his throat and cleaned his glasses for a moment. “Well. We will discuss scholarships when we get there… if we can come to an arrangement. I do believe this is something that we are going to need to wait on a decision for, until I can speak to Dr. Avonmorea in person.” He straightened up. “Be that as it may, Xander, if you receive any more mysterious letters or invitations, do tell me straightaway. And it would likely be kind to inform your friends as well.”

“Right. Tell everyone about my junk mail. Do you want to know about my credit card applications, too? Because I just may qualify for a low, low rate.”

“Xander…” Willow set her hand on his leg cautiously. Xander jerked away.

“No, Wills, you’re all mad at me, and it’s just ‘cause you’re not thinking. Yay, you got into a fancy school. Good. You should go. I’ll miss you, hell, yeah, I will, but… let’s not pretend, all right? That just makes the whole thing worse.”

Giles pulled the car back on the road. “I think you’re making several assumptions, Xander, and that — not an unhealthy interest in your junk mail — is why I wish to know things like this. There is information available to you which may change your decisions, especially if it turns out that Willow — and, yes, possibly Buffy — end up attending this Addergoole school.”

“Such as?” Xander glowered. “It’s private school, Giles. They don’t do private school for losers.”

“Xander!” Willow glared at him. One more time, Xander shrugged it off.

“It’s just the truth, Will, and I don’t see why everyone is all worked up about it.”

“Secrets,” Buffy pointed out darkly.

“Yeah, well, we all have those, don’t we?” Xander flopped back in his seat. “It was a mistake. That’s all.”

“Xander.” Giles’ voice may have been soft, but it was firm. “Two things. First, from what I know from my research — as I’m sure Willow can attest — this is not the sort of place that makes mistakes, certainly not in admission. Secondly, the school is free; indeed, they appear to pay for college for their graduates.”

Xander swallowed. “Oh.” It sounded small and a little lost. He coughed and managed a lopsided smiled. “Oh, well, why didn’t you say so?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1139412.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

The Hellmouth Job, Chapters 7 &8 (A Leverage/Buffy Fanfic)

Jul8

Part I
Part Ia
Part II
Part III

The Reconnaissance

“So, complaint one, this place is in like the eighteenth century or something. LIke nothing here at all is computerized. That’s going to mean a lot more Parker and Sophie and a lot less me.” Hardison frowned at his computer screen.

“And Tara.” Sophie opened the door to their rental house to reveal her sometimes-partner. “She’s consulting on this one.”

Nate raised his eyebrows. “Hello, Tara. Sophie…”

“No, I didn’t invite her, Nate. I know how you get about these things.” Sophie held up both of her hands.

“I invited myself. Sophie and I were chatting about your little mission here, and, well, it’s Sunnydale. You need a guide.”

“A guide?” Hardison frowned. “A big town, this is not.”

“I’m not talking about the streets.” She dropped her bag and checked her make-up in the mirror. “I’m talking about the nightlife.”

“We’ve handled the mob before, Tara.” Nate frowned at her. “This one doesn’t have a revenue stream. We can’t pay you.”

“Trust me, I’ll make money. If I can’t make money in Sunnydale, then I can’t make money anywhere — and I can make money everywhere.” She made a kiss-face at the mirror and then, only then, turned to look at the three teammates. “Nate, Sophie, Hardison, good to see you. Eliot and Parker running recon?”

Hardison coughed. “Something like that…”

~

“The mall,” Eliot complained. “The freaking mall.”

“Teenagers?” Parker shrugged. “That’s what Nate said. Teenagers like malls, right?”

He side-eyed her. “You’re something else, you know that, right? Yes, teenagers like malls. So where are all the teenagers?”

“Curfew?” Parker guessed. “Do teenagers have that?”

“Why are you asking me?” Eliot nearly snarled it out. He was looking back and forth, scanning for danger, while they were faced with nothing more exciting than a nearly-empty mall.

Parker shrugged. “Seemed like you’d know.”

Eliot glanced at her, then dropped his voice and moved in closer. “Look, I was never what you’d called exactly a normal teenager, either. None of us were, except maybe Nate. Okay?”

“Teenagers are hard,” Parker muttered. “They talk a different language, and the language changes all the time. It’s like being in Paris and suddenly finding out they speak German. That wasn’t any fun either.”

“What… never mind. Look, we’re pretending to be — we’re going in as adults, all right? And the one thing teenagers know about adults is that they’re clueless. Use that.”

“Clueless.” She widened her eyes. “Like normal people!”

“Exactly. So… look. You know that feeling you get when you look at normal people? Like they’re all a bit ridiculous? Just use that. Everyone’s a bit ridiculous.”

“Have you noticed,” Parker shifted gears without warning, “how for a mall, there’s no mirrors here? When Sophie goes shopping… there’s mirrors everywhere. This place… I’ve counted something like three.”

“And there’s this guy sneaking up on us, too,” Eliot muttered. “Go check out the mall,” he sneered. “See what the teenagers in this town do. Thanks, Nate.” He ducked down, barely missing a swinging grab, and swept the attacker’s feet out from under him. “Amateurs.”

The man on the ground shifted; Eliot grabbed his hair. “P… Alisha.” At the last moment he remembered they were here under alias. “Cameras?”

“None.” She looked again. “There’s two camera balls there, but there’s no camera in them. And they didn’t even bother with the cheapest hidden cameras or anything.”

“A kill zone,” Elliot muttered. “It’s a freaking kill zone. I’m gonna murder Hardison.”

“I heard that, man.” Hardison’s voice popped up in both their ears. “All right, so what you’re in is also a dead zone. Half of that place, I can’t even find you. Oh, and the good news? Security ain’t coming.”

Eight: The Debrief

“I don’t know why driving you to the mall is part of my job. I mean, I don’t know why I have a job here at all. I mean, I’m not part of your little scooby gang. It’s not my thing. But here I am, it’s nearly dark, and we’re going to the mall…”

“Because we’re going to buy you a new pair of shoes,” Buffy interrupted, “just as soon as you tell us what you found out from Franklin. Remember, pointy bribery?”

“Yeah, well, just make sure that’s the only pointy thing you aim my way, creep girl.” Cordelia glared at the steering wheel.

“The intel, Cordy?” Xander prompted from the back seat.

“‘The intel’,” she mocked. What are you, army boy?”

“Shoes, Cordy.” Buffy flapped a hand in Cordelia’s direction. “What’s the scoop?”

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Planting some Good

Jul7


Written to kelkyag‘ prompt here to my Summer Giraffe Call Round 2. This plays off of and comes after The Fairy Road

The park in the middle of the city had always been creepy. In this city, that was hardly surprising, especially for the thousands of people who had no power of their own but enough of the blood to sense what was going on. The park had power, power by the boatload, and it had danger and ghosts twice on top of twice the power it had. For a small thing, a city block crossed by stone, it was fraught with history and with meaning, and it was so overgrown as to be more of a tangle than a park.

It would take careful handling, but Whitney had found that many things did. She started in the library, reading every article the Local History librarians could find her, down to the smallest clippings, single lines in the crime blotter, short paragraphs in obituaries, mentions in the Floral Column when she went back far enough.

She got permission by submitting a form that was ignored — that being the way of city bureaucracy — and she started slow, taking the earlier bus so she could have an hour in the mornings to work, carrying tools and plants in her gym bag.

“On this spot,” she told the dandelions and the thistles, “Emory MacDonald proposed to Dahlia Stonemason. He knelt here, in the alyssum, and her tears fell on the sidewalk.” She pulled weeds and smoothed down dirt, finding, under all the overgrowth, the marble border some long-ago gardener had placed with care. Into the fresh dirt, she planted some alyssum and watered them with bottled water.

“On this spot,” she told a particularly nasty weed a few days later, “Sally Hennings vanished. They say she’d collapsed, been hit so badly she had had lost consciousness, but when the police arrived, she was gone, never to resurface.” There she planted lilies, setting the bulbs in little circles so she could dig them up for the winter if she needed.

That was a Friday; in one week she had cleared an area 2 feet deep by five feet wide. But when she returned on Monday, she found she was not working alone.

“Here,” the translucent man told her, “a woman kissed her lover for the last time before the war.” He knelt down and dug, translucent or not, and daffodils — bright and flowering and out of season — replaced the matted weeds.

“Here,” a slim creature who had never been human sang, “They buried a diary. The book is gone, but the story remains.” Ivy twined from its feet, filling the shaded area with brilliant greenery.

Whitney did not turn, but she knew the voice that had come behind her. “This place has many a story, woman of the city, and you have no debt to it nor to its denizens. You will be a long time at unearthing them all, even with the help.”

“It needs to be done,” Whitney replied, although she could not have said why. “So I shall do it.”

“Very well, then. You will have the time and the space to do it in.” His voice had the finality of fairy gifts, but still, he sounded kind.

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