Re: FIC: Daybreak Postponed (4/12)

[Nathan Campbell <NathanCampbell@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

:) cool.

Nathan Campbell
NathanCampbell@xxxxxxxxxxxx

When sun sprays the earth
with straight-falling flames,
a cricket rubs his wings,
scraping up thin sweet song.
-Sappho


C S Armitage wrote:
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, I don'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, not to
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 she
could 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 once
the 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 not
be 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 up
to 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 the
clearing. (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 for a 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, and
the 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 of bra
or equivalent. From Willow's perspective she could also note that the
chill-flushed thighs appeared unclad, and that, from the way the skirt was
riding 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
stepped from 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 at
Samantha and considering other possibilities). 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>