Title: Welcome to the Universe
Author: JoeHundredaire
Rating: R/FR18.
Disclaimer: Right, I actually went and checked to be sure this time… after being passed around like a slut at a frat party over the past few years, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel: the Series, and all associated characters now belong to Warner Brothers. And while George Lucas used to own Star Wars and all related characters and concepts, he sold it to Disney and so now we actually get decent female characters. Hallelujah! At the end of the day, though, not mine, don't sue, and so forth and so on.
Summary: Tara embraces "come as you aren't" and lets loose for Halloween. She never could have imagined the consequences.
Joe's Note: There's been… let me count the variations. Fall of the Jedi (Tara/OC) back as a side story to Ultimate Arachnia, then Run This Town (Tara/Cordelia), Spynpsycle (Tara/Cordelia, Xander/OC), and Pyrrhic Victory (Tara/Cordelia, Xander/OC/OC) were all posted on different sites at different times, sharing a core concept that I've been tinkering with since… sometime before I installed Microsoft Office 2008 in January of that year and converted previous documents to the newer DOCX format. A long time, at any rate. The crux of why I've always had a problem following through with the idea, though, is something that a lot of YAHFs run into: what do you do after Halloween? In this case, returning the characters to normal or almost so was a complete non-starter. So… what do you do with aliens on Earth? Apart from turning the story into a Stargate SG-1 crossover and having them ally with the SGC, that is? After spinning my wheels while pondering that question for over seven years now, I finally have an answer. You remove them from Earth. Finally, as you'll notice from date tagging here, I've pushed the timeline for Buffy forward considerably. Mostly because I use a lot of material from the recent EU - particularly the cartoon and WotC RPG - and also figure it'll be easier to use current pop culture and technology than it would be to try and remember what life was like back when I was in eighth grade.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Alexander, Howard, MJ, Daniel, Christopher, Eric, DireSquirrel, Kentucky Fried Dragon, Joseph, mpop, RileyWestfall, bloodylord, Luke, Zachary, Marc, Ziryo, Elliot, Crusifikz70, Timothy, Leigh, Jason, Chris, George, Koby, Ken, Dimitria, William, Paul, Pat, Warren, Mitch, and Jess for sponsoring me on , and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.
September 25, 2014
"You know, Mama, when you told me things were going to be different once we got away from Dad… I can honestly say this wasn't what I was picturing." As her mother proceeded to have a good long laugh at her expense, Tara Maclay shot another look up at the bright orange letters that adorned the otherwise mundane, grey-sided building in front of her. Through the windows, she could make out a varied but overwhelmingly male clientele enjoying beer, fried foods, and an assortment of sporting events shown on huge flatscreen televisions… and busty waitresses in incredibly short orange shorts. "I know you're trying to make up for how he treated me by being supportive and all, but really? Hooters?"
Shaking her head, Rebecca Maclay opened the door for Tara and followed her daughter inside. "Well, it's not an entirely selfless offer. Sure, I get to look like a cool, supportive mom by bringing you somewhere you can stare at pretty girls in small outfits. But…" Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply through her nose before smiling. "Smell that? That's the smell of Hooters' hot wings, baby girl. And while you may be here for the breasts and thighs, I am most definitely here for the wings."
Tara blushed brightly at that, ducking her head and letting her black hair slide forward to hide her flushed face. "Mama!" Scowling, she kicked the side of her mother's sneaker with her boot. "You're so mean to me sometimes." And personally, Tara associated the smell in question with her mother wandering the house whining or swearing profusely while chugging from their bottle of Pepto but to each their own. Crossing her arms over her chest, she blew her hair out of one eye and stared petulantly at her mother. "So in other words, you're using me liking girls as an excuse to come here and destroy your intestines."
"Welcome to Hooters of Sunnydale. My name is Jessica." Okay, on second thought, maybe being used wasn't such a bad thing. Tara did her best to keep her eyes on the redhead's face - and her drool in her mouth - as the young woman gave them a smile. "You're both Passers, but we have more room in the back right now so unless-" Her mother shook her head, leaving Tara confused as the hostess was cut off, but she didn't have long to stand around pondering things. Marking something down, Jessica grabbed two menus and hugged them to her chest with one arm as she gestured for them to follow her. As they approached a pair of large wooden doors marked 'DO NOT ENTER, STAFF ONLY', she called back to them over her shoulder. "Just so you know, there's no violence and while most of our girls aren't the fighting type, we do have some damn big boys working the fryers. And they get really pissed if they have to leave something to burn so they can come out here and bust heads."
The seemingly random warning actually made Tara look up from where she'd been watching the redhead's swaying hips, staring at the back of the woman's head in confusion. Did they really seem like the types who would… oh. Tara stumbled to a stop just inside the doors as Jessica held up one hand, watching with wide eyes as a woman walked past balancing a tray on each of her four hands, her hair a shocking bubblegum pink and her skin a similar, albeit more muted, shade. A tap on her shoulder made Tara look back at her grinning mother. "No, I'm using you liking girls as an excuse to come here, destroy my intestines, and chat with other demons. Hey, Frank!" Across the room, a chaos demon perked up and waved to them. "Did you ever find a new place to live? We're finally unpacked if you want the guest room…"
'Frank' shook his head, pointing at the two demons he was sitting with. "Thanks, but I'm set. The three of us found this amazing house over on Revello Drive. The price was… to die for." The three demons broke into loud laughter as Jessica led them over, minimizing the group's need to shout back and forth. Seeing the disapproving look on Rebecca's face, Frank quickly explained himself. "We didn't do it, honest. Vampires got the last owners and then we picked it up fair and square. We're thinking of buying up a few more houses in the neighborhood and renting them out, actually. Sure we'd have to be really careful about who we moved in, but after that… it's like printing money. The houses are well built, most realtors sell fully furnished because they don't want to bother cleaning each place out after the last owner dies, and, well, we hear the Slayer's not too bright. I bet she'll never think to look for demons on her own block."
"You actually moved in next to the Slayer? On purpose?" Rebecca let out a low whistle at that. "Well, remember to mention us in your will, okay? If you're wrong, I want your LP collection. Especially the ZZ Top ones. I'd miss you, of course, but if it meant I finally got a copy of ZZ Top's First Album…"
Lifting a hand, Frank offered her a rude gesture that Rebecca laughed off before motioning for Jessica to continue onward. The redhead led them over to an empty table and set the menus down before smiling brightly at them. "Courtney will be over in a few minutes to take your order. Thank you for coming and we hope you enjoy your visit." And with that, she was off, stopping to chat at a few of the other tables before disappearing back out into the front of the restaurant.
Rebecca could only shake her head in amusement as she watched the redhead go. "Vampires shouldn't be allowed to be that peppy. It's unnatural." That made Tara blink; Jessica was a what now? She couldn't be… could she? Then again, it was after dark and so the many windows weren't an issue, not to mention that she'd been able to sense the demon blood in Tara and her mother. And a vampire could pass as human to work the front half of the restaurant while still having the supernatural 'cred' to be accepted by those who would be dining in the back… and the strength to defend herself if something went wrong. Huh. The more she thought about it, the more sense it actually made. Tara was drawn from her thoughts as her mother reached out and tugged on a strand of her long black hair. "So I take it that your attempt to commune with Lady Clairol this afternoon didn't go too well?"
Sitting back, Tara rolled her eyes at the woman's need to state the obvious. Ever since her mother had left her father, brothers, and the family farm behind and taken Tara to live in Sunnydale, her dirty blonde locks had been slowly darkening, finally ending up as black as coal. At first she'd lived in denial, trying to blame it on her transition from a mainly outdoors lifestyle to an indoor heavy one, but when a box of the palest blonde dye they could find failed to lighten her hair in the least… "I left it in for twice the recommended time and all it did was make me dizzy. It's official: the Hellmouth has something against blondes."
"No offense, dear, but we are drawing on magic that's polluted by a portal to a hell dimension. I warned you that it would probably cause some sort of physical manifestation. You're one-quarter reptomammalian in case you've forgotten; black hair is nothing. Consider yourself lucky that you're not growing scales or something." Her mother had a point, Tara realized. A gross point, sure, but a point nonetheless. "Besides, if the dye had worked and you'd gone back to your old look? What would we have done with all your new clothes?"
Tara shot a look down at her black t-shirt and blue and green plaid ankle-length bondage skirt before snorting. Like trading this look in for something… anything… else would be that horrible. It had been a bit of a gamble for her after she'd noticed her hair darkening: figuring there would probably be a clique of gothic girls at her new school, Tara had convinced her mother to invest in a new school wardrobe that would go well with her darkening hair and lightening skin. Except that had gone on to blow up spectacularly in her face: the goth girls thought she was too nice while the nice girls thought she was too goth, leaving her with a wardrobe of clothes that she still didn't feel entirely at home in and she was still a friendless wallflower. Not that she thought switching back to what her mother had dubbed her 'ren faire chic' look would help with the latter, but at least then she'd be a more comfortable wallflower instead of a black-clad, evil-looking wallflower.
Even after a full month, attending public school still felt incredibly strange to Tara. But with her mother now working two jobs to make ends meet, homeschooling just wasn't an option anymore and so it was one of the sacrifices she found herself making in exchange for the new freedoms she enjoyed. She just wished that her first attempt at public schooling didn't involve the Slayer. Sunnydale High was home to more people each day than her entire hometown back in Kentucky. Dealing with that was nerve-wracking enough. Knowing that one of the teenage girls wandering the halls with her was a supernaturally empowered demon killer, on the other hand? That easily took things from nerve-wracking to downright terrifying. Sure, she wasn't too demonic looking - only the bone skewers on the undersides of her arms identified her as anything more than a normal human - but Slayers weren't exactly known for their reasoning abilities. More like their hacking, slashing, and staking abilities.
Setting aside further contemplation of fashion, friends, and ancestral foes for later, Tara turned her attention back to the menu. Unlike her mother, she had no real desire to destroy her digestive tract with buffalo wings. Or a buffalo chicken salad. Or a buffalo chicken sandwich. Which, when dining at a restaurant dedicated to toxic orange wings and girls in orange short shorts, didn't leave her many choices. Then one entry caught her eye. 'PHILLY CHEESE STEAK: Onions, green peppers, mushrooms, provolone cheese. We have a big steak in this one.' Goddess. What a horrible pun. Tasty sounding, but still a horrible pun.
"Hello, my name is Courtney, welcome to Hooters of Sunnydale. Can I start you two off with something to drink?" The new voice made Tara jump and look up… and then the staring began. Oddly enough, it wasn't the waitress's remarkably large bust that her eyes were drawn to, either. As she continued to gawk, the blonde cleared her throat impatiently. "I don't mind if you want to stare, sweetie, but you do need to squeeze in some ordering somewhere. You're not my only table, you know."
Neither the waitress's words nor her chest - and it was a very nice chest indeed - could distract Tara from… "Y-you're an elf."
Raising her hand, Courtney held a finger in front of her pointed ear and slowly drew Tara's gaze across to rest on her face. Once that was accomplished, she shook her head and Tara watched in disbelief as the woman's blond bob abruptly darkened to a nice chocolate brown before growing out to touch her shoulders. "Actually, I'm not. I just play one on TV. Listen, you're not one of those ear fetish types or anything, are you? Because I'm fine with people staring at my boobs or my butt or my legs - I mean, look at where I work - but my ears… that's just kinda weird."
"Well, a Sam Adams sounds great right about now. Tall. Because I think I'm going to need the big one if we're going to start talking about my daughter's sexual fetishes…" Letting out a squeak of embarrassment, Tara buried her blushing face in her hands at her mother's words. "And since she probably won't be doing anything other than blushing and wishing she could disappear for the next few minutes… Diet Pepsi for her." A few quick scratches of a pen against paper, the squeak of sneakers against the wooden floor, and then they were alone again. "Oh stop that. It's not my fault you couldn't just stare at her ginormous chest like a normal customer."
Tara raised her head, staring at her mother incredulously. "Wait a minute. It's my own fault you embarrassed me? And it happened because I'm not a pervert?"
Turning in her seat, her mother pointed out each of the waitresses working the back room before returning her gaze to Tara's. "The girls here are hired for one reason and only one reason, Tare-bear, and it isn't their IQ. She gets paid to let people stare at her chest. She's used to that. Her ears, obviously not so much. Probably because compared to everything else back here, pointy ears is nothing. But think about it, Tara. How would you feel if someone sat there staring at your arms?"
Well personally she wouldn't be too keen on people staring at any part of her, but Tara understood what her mother was saying. "Uncomfortable." Seeking to redirect the conversation, she cast about for a new topic before deciding to go with the obvious. "So did you have a good day at work today?"
"Eh, work was worky. I worked. Then I left as fast as possible." Shrugging, her mother picked up her menu and began perusing it again. Tara didn't understand why; they both knew she was getting a platter of wings. "And you? How was school today?"
Looking down at her black nails, Tara absently inspected them for chips as she replied to her mother's question. "It was school. I learned. Then I left as fast as possible. I still haven't figured out who the Slayer is but I know she's in the building with me, which makes it really hard to relax and pay attention to what's going on in class. And nobody wants to talk to me because all the different cliques think I belong somewhere else."
Her mother leaned forward, reaching across the table to grip her hand tightly. "I'm sorry, Tara. But you know why I had to go. And I couldn't just leave you there…"
"Mama, he was hitting you!" Tara looked up, giving her mother's hand a squeeze. "I'm not blaming you for leaving. And we both know he didn't like me because I took after you. If you'd left me behind, he probably would have turned me into his new punching bag. I'm glad we left. I just miss having people to talk to." Even if they were her jerk of a father and equally unpleasant brothers.
Rebecca sighed and pulled her hand away, resting her elbow on the table and planting her chin in her palm. "It's my fault. I should have seen the real him when I married him, if not earlier. He was a sorry little man who hated anything supernatural unless it was useful to him. He was hoping that I would give him boys that he could raise and then use against those who he thought were out to get him. Instead, I gave him three average sons and an extraordinary daughter who was the only one to inherit either my magic or my demonic traits." Tara smiled at the praise; she was still unused to it after so many years of her father's vitriol. "Back to the future, though… I can't do anything about your Slayer problem, but maybe we can do something about your people problem?"
If only it were that easy. Tara sighed and shook her head. "Like I said, everyone thinks I belong in someone else's clique. I'm too scary for the normal girls, not scary enough for the goth girls, too sober for the stoner girls - and I'm pretty sure you'd make me miss Dad's whoopings if you ever caught me with drugs…" Holding out her arm underside up, Tara forced the tip of her bone skewer out. "And there's these, of course. Which is the real problem; even if I had some idea of how to move between the different groups and make friends, how would I keep them when they finally found out I wasn't human like them?"
"Tara… sweetie… you do realize I went to high school, right? And I looked like I do right now?" Reaching up, Rebecca ghosted her fingers over her necklace, deactivating the glamour that hid her true appearance from the world. "Well, I looked younger at the time but you know what I mean. Greenish skin, skewers, et cetera. I had friends, too. A few boyfriends, even, much to your grandfather's annoyance. It's just a matter of finding the right people."
Courtney's return with a twenty-two ounce beer and Tara's significantly smaller glass of soda brought a temporary halt to their conversation. "Alright, are we ready to order or do we need more time?"
Closing her menu, Rebecca passed it to their waitress before checking her watch. "Well, it's Thursday and after five o'clock… that means bottomless bone-in wings, right?" Courtney nodded, and Rebecca rubbed her hands together in excitement. "Excellent. I'll start with 3 Mile Island, with a side of bleu cheese. What about you, Tara?"
After giving the menu one last looking over, Tara pouted. She was trying to watch her weight… but the entrees that 'Dr. Hootie' identified as being healthy were few and far between and not particularly appetizing looking at that. Finally, she decided to take a piece of advice from one of the few sermons that had actually penetrated her brain over the fifteen years her father had dragged her to church: sin and sin boldly. "The Philly Cheese Steak, please. Beef. Which doesn't make much sense because don't all steaks come from cows?"
"Last time I checked, yeah. I've never understood the chicken option either and nobody's ordered one as long as I've worked here so… who knows? Maybe it's like putting a wild haggis dish on the menu and the bosses just did it for a laugh?" Shrugging, Courtney scribbled their order down before tucking the pad into the pouch hanging at her hip. "Alright, I'll get that right in. We're not too busy right now so I'm thinking ten minutes, fifteen tops."
Courtney wandered off to serve another table, Tara tilting her head to one side to get the best view. Then something brushed against the back of her hand and she jerked her attention back to her bemused mother. "You are many things, Tare-bear, but I think we can officially say that subtle is not one of them."
Instinctively Tara went to duck her head in embarrassment, only to halt when her eyes came to rest on the wad of money in her mother's hand. Her eyes widened as it was pressed between her unresisting fingers, and then grew even larger as she ran her thumb along the side and took in the sheer thickness of the bundle of bills she was holding. "What's this?"
Rebecca gently closed Tara's fingers around the bills before leaning back with a self-satisfied grin. "It's for you, obviously. To help you find the right people."
"…I'm confused." Because according to what her mother had always taught her, those who tried to buy friends were shallow, pathetic people who ultimately ended up with lots of sycophants and fake friends but nobody who would actually stand them when they needed help. That, and Tara was pretty sure that 'buying friends' wasn't supposed to be literal, so she wasn't entirely sure where the overly large wad of bills came into things. Furrowing her brow, she began counting the money she held: mostly twenties, with a few tens mixed in. "And this is a lot of money…"
"About six hundred dollars, give or take." Tara abruptly dropped the money onto the table, staring at it in horror. She had a good idea how much money her mother brought home each week, and therefore knew there was no way they could afford to spend this much money on anything, much less her lack of a social life. "Oh, don't worry, it's not mine. Your father probably won't even notice I took it from his not-so-secret stash until he goes looking for money to buy Christmas presents with. Just think of it as a great big 'screw you' for all the times he bought your brothers things but ignored you. And since it's also his fault that you didn't get to grow up a normal girl and learn how to play nice with others and make friends… all the more reason to spend it on this."
While her discomfort with the idea of spending so much money on herself was starting to fade, Tara was still left with the fact that… "Maybe I'm s-stupid or something, but I still don't get why you're giving me all this money, Mama."
Rebecca groaned and buried her face in her hands. "I know we never really celebrated it when you were growing up, but please tell me you know what the last day of October is to normal people?"
"Halloween?"
"Okay, good, I was worried there for a second. Yes, Halloween. The one day a year when everyone is expected to come as they aren't. In your case, we can take that to a whole new level." Rebecca looked up, only to sigh at the confused expression that continued to grace Tara's face. "To quote the oversized man with the pink umbrella… 'Yer a wizard, Tare-y'. With that money and our magic, we can turn you into whatever you want for Halloween. Then you can sneak into a party or something, meet and mingle, and figure out how to make friends without any of them knowing they're dealing with the 'scary but not' girl."
That sounded… brilliant, actually. Well, the sneaking part sounded a bit scary but maybe the courage to pull it off would come once she was safely hidden behind the anonymity of her costume. "And once I have some practice with actually talking to people who aren't you, I can go back to school and hopefully figure out how to make some friends. Maybe even keep some of the ones I make on Halloween, if I make any." Sure it wasn't a perfect or instant solution; she'd still have to make the friends and figure out how to determine who the 'right' ones were, but it was a path to a solution at least. Nibbling on her lower lip, Tara racked her brain to try and find an answer to the one remaining problem with the plan, only to come up blank. "Except… what should I go as?"
Rebecca shrugged. "Whatever you want, really. Well, whatever you want within reason. No throwing a sheet over yourself and going as a ghost or anything. Hmm. Well, I dressed up for all four years of high school. Maybe you can reuse one of those ideas?" Tara raised an eyebrow at that and she began ticking them off on her fingers. "Elvish maiden… pirate wench… naughty cop… naughty nurse… maybe we could do some kind of naughty schoolgirl and give you some pigtails so you can't hide behind that hair of yours…"
As her mother continued on, offering increasingly more risqué suggestions, Tara found herself staring at the woman in disbelief. The more time they spent away from Kentucky, the more she realized… she didn't really know the woman at all.