FIC: Daybreak Postponed (4/12)

["C S Armitage" <soren_nyrond@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

TITLE: Daybreak Postponed [approximately] (412)
AUTHOR: Soren Nyrond
DISCLAIMER: All characters in this part belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy -- etc etc as in part (0/12). Some ideas have been borrowed for elsewhere to illuminate this story: they did once belong to Other Companies (and still do, I imagine), but since they are by way of being generic concepts, Idon't think anything's awry.
SUMMARY: The Slayer Has Landed (Party of Four); also some (non-existent) pink-nosed bunnies look as if they might make an appearance, but don't (on account of being non-existent, as bunnies anyway)
ARCHIVING:: All enquiries welcomed
SPOILERS: None (except some people's lunches for implicit excess smoochage
AUTHOR'S NOTES: All nice feedback welcome. 
 

 
DAYBREAK HAS BEEN POSTPONED

By Soren Nyrond

Part Four - English Weather

 

 

It was wet, cold, and dark. The temperature was, like, arctic,with a nasty wind that seemed to cut through clothes like they weren't there. And there didn't seem to be a square inch that wasn't soaking wet, notto mention the way the wind drove the rain into every niche in clothes, and down the back of your neck, and . 

And the darkness meant no-one had no way of knowing which way was where.

"Giles - where are you ?" Buffy shouted into the black confusion.

"Here," Rupert Giles' voice came back. "And keep your voice down - people in England get nervous if they hear shouting."

"Nervous ?" Xander commented, wryly, from where he was trying to fit himself inside a telephone-kiosk-sized bush without impaling himself on any of the long, sharp, thorns with which it seemed Nature had seen fit to equip it. "Who'd be nervous in a tropical storm without the tropical bit ?"

There was a murmuring and then the rain and wind eased somewhat. Giles switched his torch on, and saw Willow lowering her hands from her invocation to the Goddess.

"Whew !" she said: "Is it always this . ?"

She was obviously looking for the "right" word, and, before shecould finish her question, Giles turned off the torch again and simply said: "Always - this is England. Although perhaps this is a little extreme."

"Extreme !" Buffy said, as she came up behind him: "Giles, I just saw a tree blown past - well, all right: maybe a large bush, but - "

Then she saw Xander, and giggled.

"What are you doing, turning into Tree-Boy ?"

"It didn't seem a bad idea, until I knew we were safe and we had our Slayer with us."

"Oh, yea - vote Slayer !" Buffy replied. "I'm cold and wet and- "

A noise impinged on her ears: she threw up her hand and at oncethe others stilled and silence fell again.

There was a rustle and a shadow moved and, with training fuelled by instinct and a little adrenaline, Buffy plucked a stake from her belt,and moved toward it.

 

It was the coughing that told her that what she faced might notbe a "Creature Of The Night" - in her experience vampires and zombies and the like didn't cough.

She held off the over-arm swing she'd had planned, and watched as a raincoat-clad figure stumbled into the clearing.

"Rupert - are you here ?"

"Elspeth ?" Giles turned the torch back on, and they saw a fair-haired English woman.

"Thank God," she said. "I never believed you'd make it. How did you get here ? And so quickly ?"

"Better not to ask," Giles replied. "Come here and bring us upto date - this is Buffy, the Slayer, this is Willow, and the young man in the bush is Xander Harris. They both assist Buffy and I."

"That must be painful," Elspeth said, looking at Xander in the thorn bush. "You should probably come out." She looked round further.

"Hello, Willow; hello, B- Bu - "

"Buffy - it's short for Elizabeth. Pleased to meet you."

Xander climbed (with an "ouch" or two) out of his thorn bush, and the five of them foregathered in the least damp-and-drippy corner of theclearing. (Which as Willow pointed out, technically didn't have corners, but it was a figure of speech and anyway they all knew what was meant and - [squeek]). (The [squeek] came about when Buffy causally caressed her butt while pretending to be doubled over with a cough.)

"All right, Elspeth - what's the situation ?" Rupert Giles asked.

 

"I wish - most of us, in fact, wish - that we knew." Elspeth said. "It started with a meeting of the Inner Circle, called by Quentin Travers."

"Oh, Quentin," Giles said, acidically; "And what did dear Quentin have to say ?"

"No-one knows - no-one outside the Inner Circle, anyway. But the next day messages went out to all the Watchers in the field, alerting them to the possibility that it might not be possible to contact the Hall fora few days. Then, that evening, the darkness started."

"Darkness ?" Giles queried.

"You're certain we're safe here, Giles ?" Buffy interrupted.

"We could go to the summerhouse," Elspeth said.

Giles waved a hand, caught between Buffy's natural caution, andthe burning need he felt to find out quite what was going on.

 

The summerhouse was just large enough for the five of them - which meant that when, as Elspeth was explaining that the 'darkness' had started in the basement of the mansion, and spread through the rooms hour by hour, someone else burst in, there was a cannoning effect.

"Oh - I'm sorry," a girl's voice said.

"Don't be," Xander replied, arms suddenly full of what felt like pulchritudinous female body.

Buffy and Willow had a slightly better view of what had happened (Giles was rather urgently (and Britishly) trying to disentangle himself from an involuntary but very intimate conjunction with Elspeth), and were each considering the same image. Of a well-built young woman, perhaps one or two years' their junior, dressed in a short tartan-pattern skirt and a white blouse. A white blouse which, like her hair, was thoroughly soaked. So thoroughly that it was clear that she had forgotten to put on any sort ofbra or equivalent. From Willow's perspective she could also note that thechill-flushed thighs appeared unclad, and that, from the way the skirt wasriding up, there was very little if anything underneath it.

 

"I'm sorry, Miss Jennings," the girl squeaked. "Only, once I saw there were people in here . "

Elspeth got Giles' nose out of her cleavage and said "That's all right, Samantha - I asked you to keep a watchful eye out - you couldn't have known that I had already met our guests. This is Rupert Giles, the Sunnydale Watcher. The blonde person is his Slayer, the other two . "

"The other two help Giles and me out," Buffy said, squeezing past to shake Samantha's hand (and verify for herself that the girl did not have two small pink-nosed rabbits stuffed down her wet blouse).

Xander (with slight regret) let go of Samantha (having been holding her, he had no idea of where his hands might have ended up) and stepped back - promptly getting a blast of cold rain down his back, as he steppedfrom under the roof's protection.

 

"So when did things get this bad ?" Giles asked Elspeth.

"Last - no, two nights ago, now, " Elspeth replied, "Quentin called another meeting of the Inner Council. By then three of the students had vanished and we had the others confined to the dormitories and the refectory.             

"Anyway, he called this meeting, and partway through the sky clouded over -all in ten minutes - and the storms started and we found we were cut off. I still don't see how you managed to get here - no-one's been able to get away: Mike Forscow took his Lotus and it was blown apart by a lightning-bolt just outside the gates, and when Lavinia Bowler tried to go over the fields, the ground turned to quicksand under her feet.

"It's just a nightmare - and there's nothing in the Library that covers things like this."

Giles looked closely at Elspeth Jennings and considered the possibilities in the situation (while Buffy and Willow were looking closely atSamantha and considering other possibilities).