Title: Building on Faith
EMAIL: crc@crcdesign.net
SUMMARY: Continued from Death Love and Rock 'n Roll. Faith steps deeper into the story as Oz tries to deal with what he is and Jo tries to move past life with her mentor
DISCLAIMER: I have no claims to Oz, Faith, any other Buffy-related characters or the stories surrounding them. Original characters and the plot of this story are mine.
DISTRIBUTION: If you want it, great! Please let me know.
FEEDBACK: I'd love some.
RATING: R for nudity, violence, sex, language, and drug use. Did I miss anything?
The sun was setting over suburban Chicago, its last rays refracting red and gold in the earth's atmosphere. Another example of nature's great capacity for beauty, an innocent 12 year old girl, sat on her bed brushing her long blond hair with one hand and writing in a diary with the other.
"...and that bitch Stephanie called me "Joe" again today. I hate her. How many times have I told how many people - my freaking name is Josephine, not Joe. Joe is a guy's name and I. am. not. a. guy! Geez, my tits might not be humongous like that slut Amy - who Steff actually told me kissed Jason after school last Wednesday - but, hello? Long hair, no penis -oh and Steff also told me that Jason's is reeeeeaaaaly small. But how the heck does she know? Anyways, I saw "
"Josephine, honey could you come here a minute?" called a strained voice from downstairs that sounded vaguely like her father.
"I'm on my way!" she called, trying to put as much put-outednes into her voice as possible. 'Like, they can't think I'm just at their beck and call, answering to their every whim, you know?'
She got up and put a robe on over her summer-weight pajamas. No, she didn't have large breasts, but she did have them and she wasn't comfortable with the fact you could see them sticking out against the thin cotton.
Jo heard another noise from downstairs. Something falling, hard. And she heard her mom scream. "No! What? No! Help!" She froze, terrified.
"Mom?" she asked in a voice that couldn't possibly be heard outside her room.
That voice she could only assume was her fathers, though it sounded even less so now, called out, "I said get down here! Now, young lady!"
Jo opened her door and stepped out, slowly, struggling to get her trembling legs to decide whether she was going downstairs or out the window. Then she heard someone... something pounding up the stairs. And she heard the sounds of her mother struggling against it.
It reached the top of the stairs. It was her father, but it... wasn't. He was hunched over - like his legs weren't jointed right. There was hair all over him and he was... growing. His clothes were ripping apart as he walked toward her with rage in his... yellow eyes? And... he had claws... and his mouth was... Jo's brain pretty much shut down.
She didn't know how not to believe what she was seeing - but she knew it couldn't be. Her parents were downstairs. Watching TV. Or "Cuddling". Her father certainly wasn't turning into a hairy, clawed animal or dragging her mother up the stairs by her neck.
The thing ripped her mother's right arm out of its socket, but the woman was still aware. "Oh, Lord God!" she cried, somewhere dead between an expletive and a prayer. "Jesus in Heaven, please. Please save me. Save my baby. Don't let..."
At that moment, Jo's legs decided that this wasn't the place to be. In a blind panic she pulled back into her room, locked the door layed on the floor, sobbing. Her mother had stopped crying out. It didn't take much imagination to guess why.
Eventually Jo rolled under her bed. You couldn't hear what was going on out in the hall as well under there. Still, she puked in the unwashed clothes that surrounded her as the muffled sound of mastication reached her.
The next morning Jo's father kicked her door in. He was soaked in blood. It covered his face, his chest, his whole naked body. He had literally bathed in it. But he had no memory of anything. He just woke up next to a few gnawed remains of his wife's corpse. He wouldn't even have known it was her except that he'd awoken with a piece of cloth in his mouth - sucking on it. Sucking the blood from a piece of the dress she'd worn the night before.
Luckily, by that time Jo had found her way out the window and into the big, bad world.
***
Faith heard something coming toward the back door of the club. Well, maybe 'heard' isn't entirely the right word - sensed might be a more complete explanation, though there was an aural component to the sensing. She pitched the half-smoked cigarette over toward the vampire's victim and ducked behind a dumpster. Too late to save her... oh well, what's one more?
A creature burst through the door, hitting it so hard right in the center that the door nearly flew straight out off its hinges. She thought she saw the beast - a werewolf she now realized - sniff. Maybe it was smelling her - she had worked up quite a sweat tonight - maybe it was smelling the blood of the fresh corpse just yards away from it. That seemed more likely.
Moments later, a man jogged out the door with a rifle cradled in his hands. The wolf's hackles raised and it turned to face the man, circling to its left - luckily away from her. The rifle raised and Faith was about to wave bye-bye, puppy when someone else came charging out the door. 'Oz?'
She barely had time to recognize him as a flurry of activity took all her attention. The first wolf and Oz both charged the man at the same time. Oz actually seemed to transform in mid-air - from plain old Oz to something very close to totally werewolf. Before either of them made it to the guy though, the gun went off. Oh, the guy paid for it, but he did take down that first were.
A woman stepped out and shot Oz in the left hind leg before Faith even had time to consider intervening. Actually she wasn't sure which side to be on... but this sure was one hell of a show.
Oz bolted from the scene and the skinny crew-cutted blond fired a few shots into the front of a van parked there. She was standing right over the vamp's victim, but she didn't seem to have noticed. Then she walked over to the guy Oz had just mauled and blew his head off. 'This is some cold motherfucking shit, right here,' she thought. The girl stumbled out of the parking lot and into the alleyway, dropping to her knees to retch down a storm drain.
Faith stepped out, trying to decide whether to warn this chick to move it before the cops show up or to grab her and find out why she'd shot Oz. 'Hell, I don't even know if Oz is still a good guy - he could be all wolf by now... Or maybe this is why They told me to come here. Maybe that has something to do with him... but what? And should I care what They want?'
***
Oz sprinted down the street, into a residential area, back through the main business district, down by the river's industrial complexes, along a railroad. He was back in human form, tatters of clothing flapping on his body, but he could feel the power of the beast coursing through his body.
Oz's body ran, and his mind did as well. 'So, you just killed a guy, Oz. How does that make you feel? What was that - self-defense? Defense of another of your own kind? Defense of someone who reeked of another human's blood this morning? Are you defending evil now?
'Are you evil now?'
He came across a huge expanse of blacktop spreading out from a dense industrial zone. The late show of a large movie theatre was letting out and people were filing to their cars and to some of the late-night eateries and upscale coffee houses further into the shopping plaza. Oz looked down at his shredded clothes and figured this was not the place to expose himself.
He turned right, up the hill. Abandoned storefronts, ghosts of retail past, looked forlornly towards the river and the new Waterfront complex. Their windows gaped darkly, sobbing at having been left to stand empty while the new complex was built, leased and used. The developers hadn't even had the decency to push them over and spare them the grief of watching as thier replacements made them obsolete.
Oz continued up the hill into an equally decrepit residential area where he stumbled, exhausted, into a patchy yard with broken bottles and wrappers and paper strewn about. The house in front of him was boarded up, with a notice of condemnation nailed to each piece of plywood over every window. The front door however, was unlocked. Oz went in, needing a place to recover his composure. A place to rest. A place to figure things out.
There was body in the entryway. Oz reeled. 'Can't I just get away?'
But the body stirred, turned bleary eyes toward him and said, "Shut the door, Jim, you're lettin' all the penguins out!" Oz complied, though he didn't see any Antarctic birds or Mario Lemieux. He stepped over the body and into the living room.
Needles were scattered about. There were scorch marks on the carpet and the soggy looking couch. Three young men were sitting in the corner, passing a bowl and filling the air with bluish smoke.
Oz heard someone approaching from behind. In this creaky old house, with the wolf this close to the surface, he wasn't likely to miss much. He didn't react though until he felt the barrel of a pistol pressed to the back of his neck. Oz lost control again.
His left arm lengthened, strengthened and grew fur. His fingernails became steel claws. It was excruciating as always, but the pain didn't matter. He whirled.
Before the gunman even had a chance to register the movement, his weapon was bouncing off the front door and landing on the human refuse in the entryway. He saw Oz's arm - even in a blur - and stepped back, the fat blunt in his mouth dropping to the floor between them. Oz drove his claws into the wall behind the man and snarled, his eyes fading from their human blue to yellow, his mouth lengthening slightly towards a muzzle, fangs gleaming. "Get. Out." He ran.
Oz picked up the doctored cigar and walked past the living room to the kitchen, considering. He popped up onto the almost clean counter and leaned back against a window as rain started to thunk off the plywood outside. A flash of lightning peeked through where the wood wasn't mated well with the windows, followed by a roll of thunder. A baby wailed in a nearby house.
Oz brought the blunt up to his lips, drew the drug deep into his lungs and opened his mouth to let the smoke float out. "Yup. And you better get used to it, kid."
**AN: More on the way. The next chapter is heavy on Faith.**
EMAIL: crc@crcdesign.net
SUMMARY: Continued from Death Love and Rock 'n Roll. Faith steps deeper into the story as Oz tries to deal with what he is and Jo tries to move past life with her mentor
DISCLAIMER: I have no claims to Oz, Faith, any other Buffy-related characters or the stories surrounding them. Original characters and the plot of this story are mine.
DISTRIBUTION: If you want it, great! Please let me know.
FEEDBACK: I'd love some.
RATING: R for nudity, violence, sex, language, and drug use. Did I miss anything?
The sun was setting over suburban Chicago, its last rays refracting red and gold in the earth's atmosphere. Another example of nature's great capacity for beauty, an innocent 12 year old girl, sat on her bed brushing her long blond hair with one hand and writing in a diary with the other.
"...and that bitch Stephanie called me "Joe" again today. I hate her. How many times have I told how many people - my freaking name is Josephine, not Joe. Joe is a guy's name and I. am. not. a. guy! Geez, my tits might not be humongous like that slut Amy - who Steff actually told me kissed Jason after school last Wednesday - but, hello? Long hair, no penis -oh and Steff also told me that Jason's is reeeeeaaaaly small. But how the heck does she know? Anyways, I saw "
"Josephine, honey could you come here a minute?" called a strained voice from downstairs that sounded vaguely like her father.
"I'm on my way!" she called, trying to put as much put-outednes into her voice as possible. 'Like, they can't think I'm just at their beck and call, answering to their every whim, you know?'
She got up and put a robe on over her summer-weight pajamas. No, she didn't have large breasts, but she did have them and she wasn't comfortable with the fact you could see them sticking out against the thin cotton.
Jo heard another noise from downstairs. Something falling, hard. And she heard her mom scream. "No! What? No! Help!" She froze, terrified.
"Mom?" she asked in a voice that couldn't possibly be heard outside her room.
That voice she could only assume was her fathers, though it sounded even less so now, called out, "I said get down here! Now, young lady!"
Jo opened her door and stepped out, slowly, struggling to get her trembling legs to decide whether she was going downstairs or out the window. Then she heard someone... something pounding up the stairs. And she heard the sounds of her mother struggling against it.
It reached the top of the stairs. It was her father, but it... wasn't. He was hunched over - like his legs weren't jointed right. There was hair all over him and he was... growing. His clothes were ripping apart as he walked toward her with rage in his... yellow eyes? And... he had claws... and his mouth was... Jo's brain pretty much shut down.
She didn't know how not to believe what she was seeing - but she knew it couldn't be. Her parents were downstairs. Watching TV. Or "Cuddling". Her father certainly wasn't turning into a hairy, clawed animal or dragging her mother up the stairs by her neck.
The thing ripped her mother's right arm out of its socket, but the woman was still aware. "Oh, Lord God!" she cried, somewhere dead between an expletive and a prayer. "Jesus in Heaven, please. Please save me. Save my baby. Don't let..."
At that moment, Jo's legs decided that this wasn't the place to be. In a blind panic she pulled back into her room, locked the door layed on the floor, sobbing. Her mother had stopped crying out. It didn't take much imagination to guess why.
Eventually Jo rolled under her bed. You couldn't hear what was going on out in the hall as well under there. Still, she puked in the unwashed clothes that surrounded her as the muffled sound of mastication reached her.
The next morning Jo's father kicked her door in. He was soaked in blood. It covered his face, his chest, his whole naked body. He had literally bathed in it. But he had no memory of anything. He just woke up next to a few gnawed remains of his wife's corpse. He wouldn't even have known it was her except that he'd awoken with a piece of cloth in his mouth - sucking on it. Sucking the blood from a piece of the dress she'd worn the night before.
Luckily, by that time Jo had found her way out the window and into the big, bad world.
***
Faith heard something coming toward the back door of the club. Well, maybe 'heard' isn't entirely the right word - sensed might be a more complete explanation, though there was an aural component to the sensing. She pitched the half-smoked cigarette over toward the vampire's victim and ducked behind a dumpster. Too late to save her... oh well, what's one more?
A creature burst through the door, hitting it so hard right in the center that the door nearly flew straight out off its hinges. She thought she saw the beast - a werewolf she now realized - sniff. Maybe it was smelling her - she had worked up quite a sweat tonight - maybe it was smelling the blood of the fresh corpse just yards away from it. That seemed more likely.
Moments later, a man jogged out the door with a rifle cradled in his hands. The wolf's hackles raised and it turned to face the man, circling to its left - luckily away from her. The rifle raised and Faith was about to wave bye-bye, puppy when someone else came charging out the door. 'Oz?'
She barely had time to recognize him as a flurry of activity took all her attention. The first wolf and Oz both charged the man at the same time. Oz actually seemed to transform in mid-air - from plain old Oz to something very close to totally werewolf. Before either of them made it to the guy though, the gun went off. Oh, the guy paid for it, but he did take down that first were.
A woman stepped out and shot Oz in the left hind leg before Faith even had time to consider intervening. Actually she wasn't sure which side to be on... but this sure was one hell of a show.
Oz bolted from the scene and the skinny crew-cutted blond fired a few shots into the front of a van parked there. She was standing right over the vamp's victim, but she didn't seem to have noticed. Then she walked over to the guy Oz had just mauled and blew his head off. 'This is some cold motherfucking shit, right here,' she thought. The girl stumbled out of the parking lot and into the alleyway, dropping to her knees to retch down a storm drain.
Faith stepped out, trying to decide whether to warn this chick to move it before the cops show up or to grab her and find out why she'd shot Oz. 'Hell, I don't even know if Oz is still a good guy - he could be all wolf by now... Or maybe this is why They told me to come here. Maybe that has something to do with him... but what? And should I care what They want?'
***
Oz sprinted down the street, into a residential area, back through the main business district, down by the river's industrial complexes, along a railroad. He was back in human form, tatters of clothing flapping on his body, but he could feel the power of the beast coursing through his body.
Oz's body ran, and his mind did as well. 'So, you just killed a guy, Oz. How does that make you feel? What was that - self-defense? Defense of another of your own kind? Defense of someone who reeked of another human's blood this morning? Are you defending evil now?
'Are you evil now?'
He came across a huge expanse of blacktop spreading out from a dense industrial zone. The late show of a large movie theatre was letting out and people were filing to their cars and to some of the late-night eateries and upscale coffee houses further into the shopping plaza. Oz looked down at his shredded clothes and figured this was not the place to expose himself.
He turned right, up the hill. Abandoned storefronts, ghosts of retail past, looked forlornly towards the river and the new Waterfront complex. Their windows gaped darkly, sobbing at having been left to stand empty while the new complex was built, leased and used. The developers hadn't even had the decency to push them over and spare them the grief of watching as thier replacements made them obsolete.
Oz continued up the hill into an equally decrepit residential area where he stumbled, exhausted, into a patchy yard with broken bottles and wrappers and paper strewn about. The house in front of him was boarded up, with a notice of condemnation nailed to each piece of plywood over every window. The front door however, was unlocked. Oz went in, needing a place to recover his composure. A place to rest. A place to figure things out.
There was body in the entryway. Oz reeled. 'Can't I just get away?'
But the body stirred, turned bleary eyes toward him and said, "Shut the door, Jim, you're lettin' all the penguins out!" Oz complied, though he didn't see any Antarctic birds or Mario Lemieux. He stepped over the body and into the living room.
Needles were scattered about. There were scorch marks on the carpet and the soggy looking couch. Three young men were sitting in the corner, passing a bowl and filling the air with bluish smoke.
Oz heard someone approaching from behind. In this creaky old house, with the wolf this close to the surface, he wasn't likely to miss much. He didn't react though until he felt the barrel of a pistol pressed to the back of his neck. Oz lost control again.
His left arm lengthened, strengthened and grew fur. His fingernails became steel claws. It was excruciating as always, but the pain didn't matter. He whirled.
Before the gunman even had a chance to register the movement, his weapon was bouncing off the front door and landing on the human refuse in the entryway. He saw Oz's arm - even in a blur - and stepped back, the fat blunt in his mouth dropping to the floor between them. Oz drove his claws into the wall behind the man and snarled, his eyes fading from their human blue to yellow, his mouth lengthening slightly towards a muzzle, fangs gleaming. "Get. Out." He ran.
Oz picked up the doctored cigar and walked past the living room to the kitchen, considering. He popped up onto the almost clean counter and leaned back against a window as rain started to thunk off the plywood outside. A flash of lightning peeked through where the wood wasn't mated well with the windows, followed by a roll of thunder. A baby wailed in a nearby house.
Oz brought the blunt up to his lips, drew the drug deep into his lungs and opened his mouth to let the smoke float out. "Yup. And you better get used to it, kid."
**AN: More on the way. The next chapter is heavy on Faith.**