Assumptions and the Word "All"
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"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should!" – Dr. Ian Malcolm, (Jeff Goldblum), "Jurassic Park"
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"Are you sure this is the right place?"
Vi was doing the driving while Xander navigated. It wasn't like he couldn't drive anymore, but his limited field of view combined with the occasional vertigo while moving at car speeds caused by his lack of depth perception meant that he only did so when strictly necessary. This mission was a simple one: find the newly activated Slayers in the greater Los Angeles area. Thus, wasn't strictly necessary. Hence, Vi doing the driving.
Willow's spells indicated that there were five brand new Slayers in Los Angeles. So far, they'd been to two different high schools, a middle school, and a house out in Tarzana. The girls in question (and their families) had been alternately thrilled, scared, excited, and horrified by the revelation of their new destinies as fighters in the war against supernatural evil. And now they were here. At the Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library on the campus of UCLA. Not the usual place one goes to find a teenage girl.
"That's what the medallion says." Xander looked around at their surroundings. The UCLA campus was a mixture of classically styled buildings and more modern construction, and students were everywhere. He looked at the medallion that Willow had enchanted into a Slayer detector. "See?" He held the medallion up so his companion could see it. Rather than hanging normally, the heart-shaped charm was pulling visibly toward the building.
"Yeah, but…" Violet stopped talking. Her jaw still worked up and down for a moment, as if she was chewing on what to say. "Well, this is different at least. At least it isn't another Junior High School where they look at us like we're child molesters."
"Good point." Xander shrugged his seatbelt off and opened his door. "We'll go in and see what's the what, and find our newest Slayer, and then go get Chinese food. I'm starving and a big plate of Cashew Chicken wouldn't go to waste."
Violet's eyes widened. Trust Xander to bring up the good stuff. "Good plan."
Exchanging nods, the Scooby and the Sunnydale Slayer entered the library, intent on finding their last Slayer.
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There were several young women in the Law Library, but the medallion didn't react to any of them. Not only were none of them a Slayer, most of them looked at Xander as if he was a unique species of fungus when he got close enough to check.
"Houston, we have a problem." Violet sighed. "We're now backtracking ourselves. We've been walking in circles for a while now."
Xander scratched the back of his head and echoed Vi's frustrated sigh. "Yeah, I think our Slayer is moving around, and she's not moving around in a small area. It's almost like she's playing hide and seek with us. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was trying to visit the entire library in turn." He looked at the medallion carefully as it swung from one direction to the other. Then it stopped.
"She's stationary. Let's move!" Xander scrambled through the stacks as quickly as possible without attracting too much attention, Violet at his heels.
"I think she's at the librarian's desk. It's in that direction!" The pair cleared the last shelf and turned toward the librarian's desk that oversaw this section of the library. The first two times they passed it, there hadn't been anyone there. Now there was.
Xander and Violet stopped in their tracks. They looked at the woman they'd come here to talk to, and then back at each other. Violet shrugged, then looked back at the librarian. "What should we do, Xander?" Violet asked in a desperate whisper.
"I, uh, I mean, it doesn't seem… I've never heard of… " Xander stopped talking. "Okay, we're going to talk to her, just as if this situation were a normal one. She's a Slayer, and she doesn't know it, which means she's in danger. I'm not going to leave a Slayer ignorant about vampires and demons."
He drew himself up to his full height and, as casually and non-threateningly as possible, approached the librarian's desk. The woman, whose name and position was "Suzanne Flotte, Research Librarian" according to the metal plate on her desk, continued tapping commands into her computer using a slow-but-steady hunt-and-peck system. She still hadn't seen Xander. He waited for a moment for Ms. Flotte to notice him, then waited for another moment, before finally venturing a polite, "Excuse me, Ms. Flotte?"
The woman turned and smiled up at Xander. Her smile was lopsided, but friendly. Xander took the woman's look in one glance. Suzanne Flotte had to have been the oldest newly activated Slayer they'd found. While most of the new Slayers had been between fifteen and seventeen, there were some outliers. One of their new Slayers had only been nine, while the oldest one so far had been nineteen. But she was definitely not nineteen. Her hair was cut conservatively and professionally, and was almost a brassy red. Her eyes were intelligent and twinkled.
She was also short. Even while she was sitting down, Xander could tell that if she stood upright, she wouldn't top five-foot one. But it wasn't her height that really caught Xander's attention.
"Ihth pronownthed 'flottee'', nod flowtay. Nay ah help oo?" No. What really caught Xander's attention was the woman's electric wheelchair, and the fact that the woman's entire body was clenched like a fist. Her left arm was held tight against her body, useless for any sort of fine work. The woman was only using her right arm, and even then it was clear that fine motor control did not enter the picture.
"Uh, yeah, sorry. Flotte." He pronounced it correctly this time. "Ms. Flotte, my name is Xander Harris, and this is my associate, Violet Day. We need to talk to you about a very urgent matter. And I promise you, no matter how strange or unusual this sounds, we're telling you the truth. Could we have a few minutes of your time? Afterward, if you want us to, we'll leave you alone."
Suzanne Flotte stared up at Xander from her wheelchair. The twinkle never left her eyes, but her mouth screwed up into a lopsided bow. Xander became convinced that she was going to refuse.
"Ohkhay. Come wid me to da schtaffrum."
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"Mission accomplished, G-man!" Xander stretched as best he could in the front seat of the car. They were headed back home, and Xander could already feel the creaky bones caused by days stuck in a car. "We got them all."
"That's wonderful, Xander. I'm glad you didn't face any problems."
That caused Xander to smile. "Oh, I wouldn't say there wasn't any problems. Just that we talked to all the new Slayers. Which reminds me. Can you have someone look into what's left of the Potentials file for the name Suzanne Flotte? F-L-O-T-T-E. Pronounced 'flottee' and not 'flowtay,'
"Certainly, but why?" Xander heard Giles to turn to one of his staffers and mumble some set of directions. "Is there something wrong?"
"Well, I wouldn't really call it wrong. It's just unusual. For one thing, she's thirty-four. Have you ever heard of a thirty-four year old Slayer?"
"Um, no. No. In the history of the Slayer, the oldest who was ever called was Nicky Wood, Robin's mother. She was twenty-one. We've always assumed that if they weren't called before that point, they never would be."
"Right. And then Willow upsets the apple cart by activating all the potentials. All the potentials. Not just the potentials under twenty-one." Xander shook his head at the implications. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Suzy isn't going to be our strangest case. And this one is pretty strange."
"What do you mean? Her age?"
"Well, her age and the fact that she, uh, well, she's disabled. She's got something called "cerebral palsy" and is in a wheelchair permanently."
"She's what?" Xander could hear Giles surprise.
"Yeah, she's in a wheelchair and doesn't have a lot of fine motor control over her own body. From what she told me, it's like her brain is on overload and has clenched her entire body into one big fist."
"Extraordinary. Hold on…" Giles said something more to someone on his side of the line, then returned. "Oh dear. Xander, she's listed in the Special Contingency file."
"Special contingency file?" Knowing the old Watcher's Council, being a potential who was considered "special" couldn't be a good thing. "Care to explain?"
"Xander, the Special Contingency file, well, you see, the Council looked at Slayers like they were disposable weapons, not individual people. And you know we're trying to change that. But –"
Xander didn't like where this was going. "What was the special contingency, Giles?"
"The Special Contingency file was a list of potentials who were marked for immediate termination if it was determined that they had become active Slayers." Xander could feel the shame pouring through the cellphone. "These were girls that the old Council had ruled would be useless as slayers. I was always told that these were young women who had already shown they weren't morally capable of assuming the duties of protectors of humanity; child psychopaths and the like."
"But in Suzanne's case it would have been because –"
"Because she couldn't be an effective fighter, yes." Giles finished for him. Giles cleared his throat, one of the usual tells the older gentleman used when he wanted to change the subject. "So, at least we have four new Slayers coming to headquarters, and at least Ms. Flotte is aware of the supernatural. We're going to have to let the team we eventually assign to Los Angeles permanently to keep an eye out for her."
Xander almost chuckled. "Not necessary, Giles. We have five Slayers coming. I sort of offered Ms. Flotte a job. She's coming back to the castle."
"But…"
"Giles, she's not only a Slayer, she's a licensed attorney and has a PhD in library science. Tell me we can't use someone with those skills? You'll not only have a great researcher, but she'll be a great researcher who can relate on a personal level with the other Slayers." In the driver's seat, Vi started to say something, but stopped when Xander held up a hand. "She's a Slayer, and we take care of our own. Vi's already said that she'd be willing to teach Suzy all the combat techniques she's capable of. Might not be much, but she'll be better off for it."
"Ah… I see. Yes, all right. That seems reasonable."
"Okay, we're about to it the highway. I'll call you again when we stop for the night. And Giles?"
"Yes, Xander?"
"Try not to think about all the potentials who would have made even worse slayers than Suzy. At least Suzy is happy and stable. We could have ended up with someone like that Eileen what's her name, the serial killer. Talk to you later."
He closed the cell phone, then leaned back in his seat, just feeling the way the road felt under the car.
Violet kept sneaking glances at him from out of the corner of her eye. At first he ignored it, but finally couldn't do it anymore. "Okay, what?"
"I can't believe you totally jinxed us like that! What were you thinking? 'Could be a serial killer!' Come on! Now that's totally going to happen!"
Xander's chin his the car's floorboard.
"Ah hell… what have I done?
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Author's Note: It all belongs to Whedon and his people, not me.
Author's Note the Second: This story was inspired by and is dedicated to my beautiful, intelligent, and amazingly successful sister Suzanne, who hasn't let the depressingly long list of physical problems she suffers because of her grand mal cerebral palsy stop her from graduating from law school, which she did just this past weekend.
Suzy Q, your older brother loves you and is proud of you, and always has been. You inspire me to accomplish more than I would otherwise.