madimpossibledreamer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
madimpossibledreamer) wrote2018-04-07 11:54 pm
madimpossibledreamer) wrote2018-04-07 11:54 pm
Entry tags:
Chapter 10: More Dangerous than Donut Holes
Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Bleach (I Hope Tomorrow's a Better Day)
Chapter Summary: Xander can't ignore the changes anymore.
Word Count: 1607
Rating: Gen
Notes: Fun facts: I chose a mouse because mice are actually often huge bullies. Rats are usually more social and just really curious in general (they love to explore and say hi to new humans as long as they've been socialized a little). Xander, of course, would not know the difference.
Xander wakes from another dream about sand flats in which the weird whispering has grown even quieter and less intelligible to the phone ringing. It’s Willow, calling from the coffee shop. She’s babbling worse than usual, which means that someone probably made the ill-advised decision of giving her some type of caffeine in a beverage, but she’s also doing it under her breath, which is just barely this side of terrifying. When she’s in a mood like this, the amount of concentration it takes to remember things like personal volume…
The only thing he catches, between people shouting in the background and things smashing, is ‘invisible monster’, but that doesn’t tell him much. He considers for, like, point two seconds asking her what’s wrong, because the stream of words is kind of nonsense even for her (or, he considers with a pang, maybe he just hasn’t listened to it long enough and while he’s gained proficiency in Japanese maybe he’s lost equal proficiency in Willow-babble, he has to fix that at some point if they can ever get their schedules to line up), before he realizes that’s probably just wasting time when he can be on the scene doing…something useful.
He throws on a jacket and runs upstairs. It feels slower than recently, but he attributes that to being woken early in the morning (seriously, the sun’s not even that high yet, but he hadn’t grabbed his watch today either so he’s got no clue how early it actually is). Tony’s snoring in front of the TV, but thankfully he doesn’t even stir.
He gets to within a block of the coffee shop when he hears a scream. That’s the only way he can think of describing it, even though it’s clearly anything but human. It feels…natural. Primal. He can feel the shot of adrenaline immediately, and knows, knows it somehow, even if he’s never heard it before.
Has he? Or was that something else from the dreams?
And then he catches sight of it. It’s…well, it’s definitely not invisible, for one thing. Its face is covered with a bone mask that angles back quickly into some sort of snout, and its teeth alone are terrifying. The whiskers mean it’s—hang on, that head plus—it’s a monstrous rat. Or mouse, or something. It’s got a huge hole in its throat, so how it’s making that scream—yeah, it screams again—is…probably something weird and magic if he’s honest with himself. Its tail looks like someone yanked out a spinal cord and put it on the back of this creature. Right now it’s sitting back on its hind legs and watching with eager, glowing yellow eyes, tail swishing as it watches the panic.
“I don’t think they exist,” he mutters under his breath, and then watches in horror as two people run straight toward its bone claws, which are as long as his arm. “No, don’t run that—way,” he finishes, voice dropping like his heart as he watches the claws tear through the two like they’re tissue paper. Blood spatters. The bodies fall, but he can see the terrified ghosts of the people, chains and all. With a grin from his nightmares, the monster reaches out and snatches up the screaming ghosts, popping them into its mouth like they’re popcorn. The thought is sickening.
The coffee shop itself is half-demolished, bits of the ceiling hanging like traps, and the area where the phone was—
No. He refuses to believe it. Willow got to somewhere safe, before the area was torn away.
He parks haphazardly, because more important things than traffic laws are going on, and starts running in the direction. He nearly jumps out of his skin—well, not actually because that had stopped—when something appears beside him.
“So. Invisible monsters are new,” Buffy comments, barely winded, and he manages a smile because she’s here and they’ve got a chance now. Except—wait a minute.
“Uh, so you’re not seeing or hearing the Incredible Screaming Mouse?” he pants, and Buffy manages a wide-eyed glance at him without tripping over bits of the street. Pretty incredible, considering he’s having issues just keeping her in his peripheral vision and not tripping when he’s actually looking where he’s going.
“Escaped from the circus?” she guesses. “Nope. I mean, I can see what it’s doing, but not while it’s doing it, which makes it difficult on the fighting front.”
“The clown used to keep it,” he responds firmly, because it’s official and everyone knows it, clowns are evil. And so is whatever this is. “Okay, since I can see it, I can maybe be your eyes or something—down!”
Fortunately, her reflexes are good, and she battle rolls out of the way. His aren’t quite as good, so he throws himself to the ground just in time and feels the fiery agony as one of the claws tears a strip down his back. He can hear himself scream, an actual human scream, and Buffy yell in fury. He rolls like he’s actually on fire and keeps rolling even through the pain, because he has to get out of the way, and quickly pushes himself up.
The eyes dart between him and Buffy. She’s only equipped with an axe that she probably grabbed from her Trunk of Weapons. Or her closet, with the rest of her shiny accessories. It’s better than the stake, but he still feels disappointed somehow. It decides to go after Buffy, maybe because she’s the bigger threat, paw speeding down at her. “Buffy! Hand!” he yells.
Her axe does manage to tear into the paw, but not cut it off completely, and in response there’s another spine-chilling monster-scream. It takes him a minute to realize she’s watching where his gaze is to figure out where the monster is, which is very cool. She does, generally, have great battle instincts.
“Xander! Buffy!” Willow calls, gasping, and he turns to look, sees Willow trapped between fallen wood and bits of the ceiling, and it’s going to come crashing down at some point.
“I’ll get Willow. You warn me if it comes after me,” the Slayer decides instantly, switching her grip on the axe and breaking out into a full run.
It turns, and he opens his mouth, but the tail whips around, smashing into his chest and sending him flying. He hears an unmistakeable crack, loud in his ears, as all his air rushes out of his lungs to be replaced by sudden, unending pain that he knows means he broke at least one rib or three. The problem is that he can’t make more than a wheezing sound at the moment, and it’s bounding after Buffy with a gleeful roar, accelerating even faster than a Slayer’s speed.
He’s glad he was propelled into a wall, because he can use it to prop himself up, try to get to his feet. His whole body is one mass of nerve endings screaming of pain at him, but he can’t afford to listen, not now, not when Buffy and Willow…
He tries to push away from the wall and is unprepared for the sudden increase in the level of pain to an amount he hadn’t known existed, and collapses back against the wall, barely catching himself before he slides back down to where he’d been before. He watches in anguish, trying in vain to get his voice to appear, as the creature picks up Buffy with both front paws, teeth bared in savage delight, a trail of what very well might be drool leaking in one glob from its mouth—except, no, the loud hiss and the way Buffy yelps at the touch means it’s probably some kind of acid or poison attack. She buries the axe in its shoulder and it screams again. That’s pretty good, when she can’t see it, but now she’s tugging at the axe, which isn’t budging, and it starts pulling her body in two different directions. Reading about being drawn and quartered was morbidly fascinating when it’s just some description in some old tome, but now that it’s happening in front of him to a friend there’s nothing remotely interesting about it.
And it’s as if the world freezes.
“Will you choose to stand by and watch as you and your friends are eaten for the reiatsu—the power—you possess? Or will you fight?” It’s a woman’s voice in his ear, speaking in Japanese, and it reminds him of his dreams and the sand flats. He can’t make that decision now, not when he suspects that his strategy of ignoring the whispers of a probably-actually-cursed-sword failed, not when it might possess him and kill his friends too or destroy the world, not when her voice is beautiful and terrible and he knows enough terrifying women to know this isn’t of the good, not when—
Willow screams, a sound of pure terror and fear and pain.
He’s been possessed before, and they’ve always managed to deal with it. Plus, Giles-san is already working on it. He might even have some answers when they return. The potential consequences for listening to this spirit are farther down the road than the immediate deaths due to the rat-monster. Cost-benefit analyses in Sunnydale usually come down to ‘what will keep me alive to fight another day?’.
Also, if he’s being honest, the draw of becoming the hero for once, particularly when Buffy and Willow feel like they’re moving on in their lives and he’s just stuck, is pretty appealing.
The resolve he feels sharpens, until it might be a sword at his side. “Then I will aid you.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Bleach (I Hope Tomorrow's a Better Day)
Chapter Summary: Xander can't ignore the changes anymore.
Word Count: 1607
Rating: Gen
Notes: Fun facts: I chose a mouse because mice are actually often huge bullies. Rats are usually more social and just really curious in general (they love to explore and say hi to new humans as long as they've been socialized a little). Xander, of course, would not know the difference.
Xander wakes from another dream about sand flats in which the weird whispering has grown even quieter and less intelligible to the phone ringing. It’s Willow, calling from the coffee shop. She’s babbling worse than usual, which means that someone probably made the ill-advised decision of giving her some type of caffeine in a beverage, but she’s also doing it under her breath, which is just barely this side of terrifying. When she’s in a mood like this, the amount of concentration it takes to remember things like personal volume…
The only thing he catches, between people shouting in the background and things smashing, is ‘invisible monster’, but that doesn’t tell him much. He considers for, like, point two seconds asking her what’s wrong, because the stream of words is kind of nonsense even for her (or, he considers with a pang, maybe he just hasn’t listened to it long enough and while he’s gained proficiency in Japanese maybe he’s lost equal proficiency in Willow-babble, he has to fix that at some point if they can ever get their schedules to line up), before he realizes that’s probably just wasting time when he can be on the scene doing…something useful.
He throws on a jacket and runs upstairs. It feels slower than recently, but he attributes that to being woken early in the morning (seriously, the sun’s not even that high yet, but he hadn’t grabbed his watch today either so he’s got no clue how early it actually is). Tony’s snoring in front of the TV, but thankfully he doesn’t even stir.
He gets to within a block of the coffee shop when he hears a scream. That’s the only way he can think of describing it, even though it’s clearly anything but human. It feels…natural. Primal. He can feel the shot of adrenaline immediately, and knows, knows it somehow, even if he’s never heard it before.
Has he? Or was that something else from the dreams?
And then he catches sight of it. It’s…well, it’s definitely not invisible, for one thing. Its face is covered with a bone mask that angles back quickly into some sort of snout, and its teeth alone are terrifying. The whiskers mean it’s—hang on, that head plus—it’s a monstrous rat. Or mouse, or something. It’s got a huge hole in its throat, so how it’s making that scream—yeah, it screams again—is…probably something weird and magic if he’s honest with himself. Its tail looks like someone yanked out a spinal cord and put it on the back of this creature. Right now it’s sitting back on its hind legs and watching with eager, glowing yellow eyes, tail swishing as it watches the panic.
“I don’t think they exist,” he mutters under his breath, and then watches in horror as two people run straight toward its bone claws, which are as long as his arm. “No, don’t run that—way,” he finishes, voice dropping like his heart as he watches the claws tear through the two like they’re tissue paper. Blood spatters. The bodies fall, but he can see the terrified ghosts of the people, chains and all. With a grin from his nightmares, the monster reaches out and snatches up the screaming ghosts, popping them into its mouth like they’re popcorn. The thought is sickening.
The coffee shop itself is half-demolished, bits of the ceiling hanging like traps, and the area where the phone was—
No. He refuses to believe it. Willow got to somewhere safe, before the area was torn away.
He parks haphazardly, because more important things than traffic laws are going on, and starts running in the direction. He nearly jumps out of his skin—well, not actually because that had stopped—when something appears beside him.
“So. Invisible monsters are new,” Buffy comments, barely winded, and he manages a smile because she’s here and they’ve got a chance now. Except—wait a minute.
“Uh, so you’re not seeing or hearing the Incredible Screaming Mouse?” he pants, and Buffy manages a wide-eyed glance at him without tripping over bits of the street. Pretty incredible, considering he’s having issues just keeping her in his peripheral vision and not tripping when he’s actually looking where he’s going.
“Escaped from the circus?” she guesses. “Nope. I mean, I can see what it’s doing, but not while it’s doing it, which makes it difficult on the fighting front.”
“The clown used to keep it,” he responds firmly, because it’s official and everyone knows it, clowns are evil. And so is whatever this is. “Okay, since I can see it, I can maybe be your eyes or something—down!”
Fortunately, her reflexes are good, and she battle rolls out of the way. His aren’t quite as good, so he throws himself to the ground just in time and feels the fiery agony as one of the claws tears a strip down his back. He can hear himself scream, an actual human scream, and Buffy yell in fury. He rolls like he’s actually on fire and keeps rolling even through the pain, because he has to get out of the way, and quickly pushes himself up.
The eyes dart between him and Buffy. She’s only equipped with an axe that she probably grabbed from her Trunk of Weapons. Or her closet, with the rest of her shiny accessories. It’s better than the stake, but he still feels disappointed somehow. It decides to go after Buffy, maybe because she’s the bigger threat, paw speeding down at her. “Buffy! Hand!” he yells.
Her axe does manage to tear into the paw, but not cut it off completely, and in response there’s another spine-chilling monster-scream. It takes him a minute to realize she’s watching where his gaze is to figure out where the monster is, which is very cool. She does, generally, have great battle instincts.
“Xander! Buffy!” Willow calls, gasping, and he turns to look, sees Willow trapped between fallen wood and bits of the ceiling, and it’s going to come crashing down at some point.
“I’ll get Willow. You warn me if it comes after me,” the Slayer decides instantly, switching her grip on the axe and breaking out into a full run.
It turns, and he opens his mouth, but the tail whips around, smashing into his chest and sending him flying. He hears an unmistakeable crack, loud in his ears, as all his air rushes out of his lungs to be replaced by sudden, unending pain that he knows means he broke at least one rib or three. The problem is that he can’t make more than a wheezing sound at the moment, and it’s bounding after Buffy with a gleeful roar, accelerating even faster than a Slayer’s speed.
He’s glad he was propelled into a wall, because he can use it to prop himself up, try to get to his feet. His whole body is one mass of nerve endings screaming of pain at him, but he can’t afford to listen, not now, not when Buffy and Willow…
He tries to push away from the wall and is unprepared for the sudden increase in the level of pain to an amount he hadn’t known existed, and collapses back against the wall, barely catching himself before he slides back down to where he’d been before. He watches in anguish, trying in vain to get his voice to appear, as the creature picks up Buffy with both front paws, teeth bared in savage delight, a trail of what very well might be drool leaking in one glob from its mouth—except, no, the loud hiss and the way Buffy yelps at the touch means it’s probably some kind of acid or poison attack. She buries the axe in its shoulder and it screams again. That’s pretty good, when she can’t see it, but now she’s tugging at the axe, which isn’t budging, and it starts pulling her body in two different directions. Reading about being drawn and quartered was morbidly fascinating when it’s just some description in some old tome, but now that it’s happening in front of him to a friend there’s nothing remotely interesting about it.
And it’s as if the world freezes.
“Will you choose to stand by and watch as you and your friends are eaten for the reiatsu—the power—you possess? Or will you fight?” It’s a woman’s voice in his ear, speaking in Japanese, and it reminds him of his dreams and the sand flats. He can’t make that decision now, not when he suspects that his strategy of ignoring the whispers of a probably-actually-cursed-sword failed, not when it might possess him and kill his friends too or destroy the world, not when her voice is beautiful and terrible and he knows enough terrifying women to know this isn’t of the good, not when—
Willow screams, a sound of pure terror and fear and pain.
He’s been possessed before, and they’ve always managed to deal with it. Plus, Giles-san is already working on it. He might even have some answers when they return. The potential consequences for listening to this spirit are farther down the road than the immediate deaths due to the rat-monster. Cost-benefit analyses in Sunnydale usually come down to ‘what will keep me alive to fight another day?’.
Also, if he’s being honest, the draw of becoming the hero for once, particularly when Buffy and Willow feel like they’re moving on in their lives and he’s just stuck, is pretty appealing.
The resolve he feels sharpens, until it might be a sword at his side. “Then I will aid you.”