FIC :: Fimbul (2/12) Revised and Reposted

["soren_nyrond" <soren_nyrond@xxxxxxxxx>]

HEALTH WARNING :: Those who didn't like this the first time, or who, 
having not seen it before, don't like it now, please delete this 
unread.
Soren

S
E
 C
  U
   R
    I
     T
      Y

S 
 P 
  A
   C
    E

 F
   O  
     R

T  
  H
     E

P 
O
 T
  E
   N
    T
     I
      A 
       L 
        L
         Y

TRAUTMATISED

(It means being afraid of German-speaking Trout!!)



TITLE: Fimbul (2/?) Revised & Reposted
AUTHOR: Soren Nyrond
DISCLAIMER: Several characters in this belong to Joss Whedon and 
Mutant Enemy. I'm poor, I'm harmless, I'm just borrowing.
SUMMARY: It's got Buffy and Willow; it does have ice, but no alcohol. 
And no real violence
SPOILERS: None; some peripheral smut (it's cold out there)
AUTHOR'S NOTES: All nice feedback welcome. Hi again to anyone that 
knows me 
ARCHIVING: As before -- have, don't change, leave a trail on Google 


FIMBUL 
By Soren Nyrond
Part 2 :: To Sleep, Perchance to Freeze


Blasted kids. 
It was always the same with kids  they insisted on doing everything 
they could to make life hard. 
Emil Haucott had been janitor at Sunnydale High for eighteen years, 
man and elderly man (his career as an industrial chemist had suffered 
a blow when three of his colleagues all died of the same obscure 
metallic poison, but Mayor Wilkins had somehow heard about it and 
arranged the school job). 
At the old Sunnydale High they (the kids) had run rampant  and 
they'd kept messing up his closets. At this new, temporary, site (and 
Emil could see the "temporary" arrangement running on till the State 
authorities found out  he knew well how the chairman of the School 
Board had afforded the new hot-tub suite in his summer-house & the 
one Emil had been told to spend half summer plumbing in  whatever 
funds were voted for the new school buildings would go the same way, 
he reckoned), they seemed to have decided to mess up the plumbing. 
There was some sort of blockage in the pipes under one of the 
classrooms, and Emil was going to have to fix it before school 
started because it was too cold in there. 

He pulled out a hexagonal key and unlocked the four catches on the 
access panel in the floor, before hoisting it up to look beneath. 
It was frigid down there, colder than it had any right to be  they 
must have blocked the hot water pipes somehow. 
He reached down to check, and then tried to snatch his hand back as 
icy cold lanced along his arm. But his muscles were already 
stiffened  his hand barely withdrew at all, and the shock toppled 
him forward and his hand hit the pipes again. The cold flooded up his 
arm like something alive. His heart seized, his skin crackled and 
blistered, and burst as his blood froze and forced its way out. He 
turned grey; one last convulsive movement turned his head even as his 
eyes froze over, and then his whole body became entombed in ice, as 
the water in the air froze round him. 


It was Buffy who had to get up early  a nine o`clock class, and the 
need for at least half an hour's cramming in the library straight 
ahead of it. And since it had been nearer one than eleven when she'd 
got in (Giles' suspicions had been right and wrong  right that 
something was going on at Embervale; wrong as to what: not vandalism 
but a small horde of nasty little demons trying to nest inside the 
late lamenteds & in the end it had taken quite a while to be sure 
they were all dead) snuggles and smoochies had been limited. 
"I'll make it up to you tonight," Buffy promised, as she ducked out 
the door. 
"Okay," Willow called after her: "I'll hold you to that." 
It was while she was having a hasty breakfast of nut-bars and decaff, 
and looking over the results of the "unusual occurrence" program that 
she suddenly saw something that she hadn't expected to. 
It called for a quick detour from her plan to spend her class-free 
morning engrossed in Sophocles, and instead a fast call to Rupert 
Giles. 


"What's the matter, Willow ?" 
In reply the hacker-witch held out the sheet of print-out. 
"Number eighteen," she said. 
Rupert Giles read the item three times before the significance struck 
him. 
"It doesn't make sense  the High School is a burned-out wreck, and 
the warding spell we left on the Hellmouth would have told us if 
anything was trying to get out." 
"But the prediction is specific," Willow replied: "Great danger, 
coming from the High School." 
"All right. As I remember it, you put in a sub-routine, or whatever 
you call it, so that you could analyse individual responses." 
Willow nodded and was about to go on to explain how the program 
worked while Giles pressed on: "I wouldn't understand any of how it 
does it, but if it does, then we can ask it on what basis it makes 
this particular prediction." 
"I can program that as soon as I get in," Willow said. 
"You're sure that no-one at the University minds you using their 
computer for all this ?" 
"Not unless they want their accounting software to fall over or find 
every meal has toffee-roasted termites on the menu -- the Health 
Department had me install a dietetics program for the kitchens." 
Willow smiled sweetly, and Giles made a mental note to do his own 
shopping lists from now on. He'd been wondering why he kept getting 
deliveries of fresh oysters every four weeks or so - - and the last 
time the delivery girls had been grinning cheekily at him.


"***king H*ll !" Ricky Mendez pulled his leather jacket back on and 
rubbed his hands together vigorously. "What is it with this room ?" 
The rest of the class were in agreement, albeit less vehemently. 
Mr. Bobczik came in, ready to invoke binomial calculus, and raised an 
eyebrow. 
"The heating was supposed to be fixed overnight," he said. "Mr. 
Mendez, find the janitor: everyone else, go along to the chemistry 
lab  I happen to know that Mr. Mortenson has organised a field trip 
for his morning's classes to the West Boulder nuclear facility." 
Ricky had no time for calculus  his grade-point average was high 
enough for him to stay on the squad as an all-purpose tackle, Uncle 
Benny had promised him a job pumping gas on the autoroute, just down 
from Skinny-Dip Beach, and Coach Curtois said he might be able to fix 
a trial for a college side, see if a scholarship could be fixed. Then 
he'd be on the Beach, not just five minutes' drive away. 

Weird Emil the janitor wasn't in his cramped little office. Ruicky 
took the chance to check the pictures behind the door and picked the 
best two and tugged them clear of their drawing pins. If he screwed 
his eyes up, the blonde one looked a bit like Virginia Swensen  not 
that the Virtuous Virgin would ever do a pose like that & 
Ricky lounged down the hall, then, hearing authoritative footsteps 
approaching, he ducked into the bathroom, only to recoil at the 
intense cold there. 
It was Mr. Capes in the corridor: "Ah. Mr. Mendez  good: I need 
someone to collect some books from the basement." 
Capes could understand that, with the limited space in the temporary 
school quarters, some text books had to be stored until they were 
needed. Why it always seemed to be his and not, for example, Mrs. 
Hillier's geography texts, he didn't understand. On the other hand, 
he was also unaware of the slightly unorthodox uses Mrs. Hillier had 
devised for the School Board chairman's hot-tub. 

Still, he had the key to the cellar, and Mendez was a muscular lad  
five crates of World Bank Regional Analyses of the West Africas would 
be no problem for him & 
They were partway down the stairs when it struck them how cold the 
cellar was. Ricky was leading, so when he stopped Capes couldn't 
immediately see what the problem was. Then, looking over the boy's 
shoulder, he saw, disbelievingly, that the cellar floor was covered 
with ice. 
It made no sense but clearly today wasn't a suitable days for getting 
the books  someone needed to speak to the janitor or & 
"Go back to your class, Mr. Mendez  I'll see the principal." 
> From the far corner of the cellar, eyes watched them depart again. 
They were cold eyes; eyes with almost two millimetres of ice over 
them, but eyes with awareness nevertheless. 


And, beneath the classroom floor, the Thing continued to wait. But 
now it was larger  perhaps the size of a good marble or a gall-
stone. And it vibrated gently as it slowly soaked in the energy, and 
changed it into what it wanted.


"Hi, Will  how was your morning ?" 
It was Buffy's turn for a clear half-day, so she'd gone back to the 
room to change. She hadn't expected to find Willow there, but & 
"Oh, okay," Willow replied. For a moment she looked embarrassed, then 
she said: "Buffy, Giles is going to ask you  and I don't want  " 
"Ask me what ?" Buffy asked  she'd made that bit out, in between 
slipping off her white blouse (worn in the hope of avoiding for 
Professor Walsh's disapproving glare) and reaching for a gayer top. 
Willow mumbled something  seeing Buffy undressed, even when it was 
just without a top on, with her white bra cinching in the lovely 
breasts that Willow worshipped (along with other bits of her Slayer), 
tended to throw her line of conversation. 

Buffy pulled the top on and said "There  now what were you saying 
about Giles ?" 
"I don't want you going back to the High School," Willow said. 
"Why would I  oh, is that what Giles is going to ask ? Well, why 
not ?" 
"Well & " Willow went into mumble-mode again and Buffy went over to 
her. 
"Come on, Will  whatever, you can tell me." 
"I tried a foreseeing spell, to make sure you'd be all right  " 
Willow held out a cup " and that's what I got." 
Buffy looked at the cup  it contained something disgusting. Then she 
looked closer. 
"Where did you find this ?" she asked. 
Willow pointed vaguely, and Buffy gave a hearty laugh and hugged her 
friend. 
"My oops," she said: "Xander came over to try to sell me some own-
brand stuff he was calling jungle juice. That was the cup he used  
there must have been some left in the bottom." 
She hugged Willow again, and kissed her. 
"Look, I'll be ultra-careful, okay ? And I promise, if Giles talks 
about the old High School, I'll find a reason not to go tonight, and 
we'll scope it out, all three of us  four, if Xander's free, 
tomorrow night  all right ?" 
Willow kissed her Slayer back, much relieved. 
"So," she said, her relief over the cup making her more confident 
that she'd aced tomorrow's seminar material, "what time do you have 
to go meet Giles ?"
"Oh," Buffy replied, as Willow's fingertips skated over her 
shirt, "In about an hour.  Why -- did you have something in mind ?"
The mixture of strawberry and honey-flavoured lip glosses (there had 
been just a slight chill in the air that morning) was quite 
intriguing - - and after that, there were some more warm and cuddly 
things they could do, to pass some time, and enjoy each other.


Through the darkness of the temporary high School, closed for the day 
now, a figure moved, making its way to the boiler room, turning all 
the boilers up to maximum. The water heated up and up, until it was 
almost at boiling point and the heat quickly melted all the ice in 
the pipes. Then the radiators began to shudder with the sudden 
violent expansions at all their joints. The High School began to take 
on the aspect of a tropical hot-house in a heat-wave. 
Then, with awesome suddenness, the ice returned, sucking all the heat 
from the entire heating system. Ice formed throughout the system, in 
every pipe, every radiator, the cold flooding the boilers. Then, in 
one explosive expansion, the metal gave way before the pressure of 
the ice, and there was ice spilling out all over the school. Spilling 
out, accumulating, merging together. The ice in the cellar thickened 
and strengthened and the temperature plummeted even further. 
And the Thing, in the cellar, vibrated more powerfully.  It had 
sucked all the heat energy into itself, and now it had sent out its 
icy tentacles to claim this place as the first part of its realm.


End of Part 2





------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar.
Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/RoMolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

Willow: "It's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in."
Buffy:  "I kinda love you."
                     'Choices'

Community email addresses:
     Post message: buffywantswillow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
     Subscribe:    buffywantswillow-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
     Unsubscribe:  buffywantswillow-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
     List owner:   buffywantswillow-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shortcut URL to this page:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buffywantswillow

Official archive for the list:
     http://www.ikoly.com/fanfic

Other links to Buffy/Willow fics:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buffywantswillow/links  
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buffywantswillow/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
   buffywantswillow-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
   http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/