Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 5

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Xander engages in a little wordplay and overhears something disturbing.
Word Count: 1349
Rating: K
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS.  READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

CHARACTER FIRST APPEARING IN CHAPTER 5
Buffy Summers-As the oldest living Slayer, she has the most experience, but hoped that the introduction of more Slayers would mean less responsibility, not more.  She would have rather spent her teen years as a normal girl.  It should be noted that she came the closest out of all previous Slayers, however, as she had friends, dated, went to school, had a job, went shopping, and many other things that she'd consider normal during her younger years with saving the world and killing monsters as a sort of side job.  Buffy doesn't always realize how good she has it.  Having an unusual, not control-obsessed Watcher probably helped.

           Xander somehow finds himself into what oddly (given the number of Slayers there are wandering about the place) seems to be an uninhabited area of the mansion.  He hears something in what looks like an abandoned room and nearly has a heart attack before he realizes it's pointless freaking out if you didn't even know what you were freaking out about.  He opens the door, which makes an appropriately eerie noise, to find a grumpy Buffy trying to clean and organize random stuff that likely came with the mansion into boxes.  She looks up and her moody face softens slightly as she waves before she frowns again.  "What does sorting things have to do with training?  And do I really need training, anymore?  You'd think Giles would worry about all these new Slayers who haven't a clue."

            "Wax on, wax off," Xander states philosophically, squatting down to look at the work she's done so far.  It isn't much.  She's probably spent more time complaining than actually doing anything.  On the other hand, it's not something he'd mind doing.  He likes working with his hands, feeling constructive, being able to do something, not mindlessly, but with a concentrated mind, filtering out all the other dumb stuff his mind liked to do most of the time.  "I'd offer to help, but I'm not sure if that's part of the lesson."

            Buffy snorted.  "Giles isn't exactly my idea of a martial arts guru, Xander."

            He tried to think about that, really tried, and had trouble repressing the grin.  "...Yeahhh, mine either.  But if you think about anything else...I mean, he's an older wise guy who teaches you how to use kicks and whatnot on your foes, and if he really puts a mind to it, he can kick some serious a-"  He catches a disapproving look from the blonde, and quickly amends it to, "...butt, if he wanted to.  Weird as that is to think about."

            "There's one difference between movies and real life, though..." she begins, and is met with a wide-eyed Xander.

            "Buff, for the sake of my sanity and worldview, don't finish that sentence.  Everything I know will fall apart.  I'll have my own little apocalypse, right here."  He looks pretty serious about that.

            She just rolls her eyes.  "...is that, eventually, movies end.  Whereas I'm stuck here.  I'm not Queen of the Slayers.  I'm not a normal girl, now that I can be.  I'm cleaning the random contents of a random room in a mansion that we just bought so we'd have room to be Slayer HQ."

            "No!  No, Buffy, how could you?!  All my certainties...fading.  I'm...My brain is...shutting...dowwwnn..." he states theatrically and then falls, a puppet with its strings cut.  Xander's had a lot of experience falling, so he knows how to do it so it won't hurt that badly.  If anything, he'll have maybe a couple bruises, which are about nothing on the scale of pain.

            He feels an unsympathetic tapping at his face and squints open the right eye, then grins.  "Do I get a fairytale kiss?"

            "In your dreams, Xander," she states, then smiles just about as playfully back.

            "So, still got dreams of the normal life, huh?  With a job and everything?"  Some of that might be difficult, especially after she'd been declared dead the once.  Of course, that was in America, but still, they probably checked that sort of thing.  She hadn't even finished school, now that he thinks about it.

            She sighs.  "Yeah.  I mean, it's not really realistic.  I don't want to work in fast food ever again.  I've been scarred for life for that.  Probably the afterlife or reincarnation or whatever else Giles is muttering about this week, too."  She smiles.  Okay, so maybe it wasn't just him trying to avoid the depression.

            "Well, remember this.  Relax, we're all counting on you.  No pressure or anything."  He's anticipating her hitting his shoulder and rolls with it slightly, so her super strength at least doesn't dislocate his shoulder.  To some extent, she'd probably never get used to that.

            "Well, I'd ask you about the mask, but you're probably sick of talking about it."  She half-heartedly begins picking up a few dusty books and thumping them into a box.

            Xander makes a face and looks away.  "Thanks for that.  Just...stay on your toes, okay?"

            She shakes her head.  He can tell exactly how enthusiastic she is about this task, because she immediately abandons any more halfhearted efforts.  "And deprive you of the pleasure of saying 'I told you so'?"

            Even she's not taking this very seriously.  Though that might be just because she's trying not to take anything seriously at the moment.  "That's not how it works.  I can say that if we're prepared, too.  I don't like being right if it's something bad, either."

            She huffs out a frustrated breath, but smiles brilliantly anyway.  "I'm always ready for anything, Mr. Rain-On-My-Parade.  Leave me to my misery."  To prove her commitment to her assignment, she begins rhythmically thumping the books into boxes again.  He's about to say that she should probably spread it out more, since boxes of books are heavy, but remembers that this is a Slayer he's talking about and promptly aborts that comment.

            "Doesn't misery love company?" he teases, but allows himself to be shooed out anyway.  People keep bringing up the Stone Mask, and it kills every single conversation dead.  Not undead-dead, the kind that actually stay in the earth like they're supposed to.

 

            He's still a little shaken, so wandering around and finding someone else he knows to talk to probably isn't the best idea.  And he's been curious about how Slayer training works, so...why not go and watch for a little while?

            He nearly goes around a corner when he hears some unfamiliar girls' voices talking, and something tells him to stop.

            "So...I kind of get the pet vamp teaching us, and the witch and the ex-warlocks.  But why do they even bother keeping the humans around?"  ...What.

            "I totally get what you mean.  They're too weak to tell us what to do or teach us anything.  Take the cyclops.  From what I hear, he spends most of his time staring at a weird mask or sitting in his room stewing in his own impotence.  What must it be like, to feel that powerless?"

            "I wouldn't want to know.  Being a Slayer is so much more awesome.  And I'm pretty sure the wimpy one is just lying about being a warlock, too.  I'd believe it of the old man, but him?"

            "Yeah, Andrew isn't much, is he?  And why won't they let us have any of the awesome stuff?  I figured for sure that since it was some sort of top secret place that they'd have guns just lying around."

            "Well...I kinda get part of it.  I mean, from what I hear, vamps don't really flinch from guns much.  But I'm sure they do damage to some of the demons at least, right?"

            ...Since when was he stumbling across some of Magneto's followers here?  He waits until he was absolutely certain they were gone, then turned the corner.  Yeah, nothing in sight.

            He'd think about reporting it, but everyone was already ignoring him.  Still, he'd keep an eye on those two.  If he could figure out who they were, that was.

            Wandering the mansion wasn't doing wonders for his level of calm.  Still, he might as well go ahead and make sure that not everyone here was a lunatic.

            He wanders in, and a few of the Slayers giggle.  Spike glances up from where he's demonstrating a hold on one of the Slayers and pauses.  "Harris!  Think the Watcher was looking for you!"

            Of course.  That'd just have to be today, too.  His brain shouldn't have even come up with the topic in the first place.

            "Thanks!"  He waves, at least partially reassured by the appearance that at least some of the new Slayers are sane.  He'd make himself scarce, if he really thought he could dodge this any more.  They'd already been patient, anyway.