Calling
~Chapter I~
Written by: Thundere
Disclaimer: This is fanfiction, I own no content nor do I make any profit of it.
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'In every generation, there is a chosen one.
She alone must fight against the vampires, demons and the forces of darkness.
She is the slayer' - Giles
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Sunnydale, 1997
Buffy Summers, the current Chosen One, had put it all behind her. Or so she thought.
She and her mother Joyce Summers had just moved from Los Angeles to Sunnydale, in hopes of starting a new life freed of monsters,
demons, destinies and everything between.
With a first glance at her new school "Sunnydale High", Buffy had no reason to believe that, aside from her slightly tainted school records,
she would be any different from her fellow school girls.
Just one visit to the library would change all that.
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"So, you're the new girl, huh," a brown haired boy with gentle eyes asked. Buffy nodded. "I'm Buffy. And you are?"
" Oh! I'm sorry, I'm Jesse," Jesse smiled sweetly and pointed to a redheaded girl sitting in a corner with a considerable mount of books in her lap.
"That's Willow, a friend of mine. Care to meet her? She's really nice, I promise." Buffy looked over to the girl. She certainly seemed harmless enough.
"Yeah, sure. I'd like that." As it turns out, Willow was as sweet as she seemed to be, once you got over her knack of constant babbling.
"We're heading to Bronze tonight, you want to come," Jesse asked. Buffy sent Willow a questioning glance. "The Bronze, it-it's a really cool place.
It's where all the high school kids hang out." Jesse smirked. "It's the only place people in our age group can hang, s'ppose that's why it's considered cool, huh?"
Jesse laughed to his own inside joke and added, "Also, the death-rate is seemingly lower there."
If there was one line worth raising an eyebrow to, Jesse's last sentence certainly was. "Death-rate," Buffy inquired flatly.
"Well, yeah. I suppose I shouldn't be telling you this, what, with you being here new and all," Jesse said. "But you know that about 15 percent of the school's students never graduates."
"Why, they flunk out," Buffy asked, while an ominous feeling wrapped her stomach. Jesse's eyes flashed darkly. "No, they turn up dead, or simply listed as missing, never to be heard of again."
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In retrospect, Buffy's talk with Jesse that morning, morbid as it was, was nowhere near as creepy as her first acquaintance with the school's new librarian Mr Giles.
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Jesse's house, 5:16 PM
Jesse gasped loudly as a new series of blows and kicks rained down upon his laying frame. Fresh blood caked a few tips of his hair, and he raised his arms in an attempt to shield his face.
His drunken father left him there, bloodied and crying on the bathroom floor.
He was so sick of this. He was so sick of his father's abusive ways, his mother's ignorance and his neighbors blindness. Most of all, he was sick of his own weaknesses.
He slowly pushed himself up, cradled his knees, and wept. The hopelessness of his never-ending pain and daily torture was overwhelming. He had to get out.
With a glance towards the bathroom door, he quickly got onto his feet and left the room, ran down the flight of stairs and left his cursed home behind.
Jesse ran and ran. He didn't stop running until he was at least 5 blocks away from his house. Then, he stopped to catch a breath.
He straightened his back and turned when he heard a noise behind him. Jesse stared at the woman. "Feeling lonely, precious? I'll make it all go away," she purred.
Jesse gulped, and another tear found it's way down his cheek. The woman suddenly embraced him. "I'll make the pain go away, never to touch you again."
He didn't see her face change.
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Outside of Bronze's street corner, 8:30 PM
One fast hit with the stake, and the vampire was gone. Only a pile of dust remained as proof that the man had ever existed.
Buffy sighed and turned to leave the site, when suddenly she was kicked backwards.
She fell flat on her back, landing hard on the ground and raised her gaze towards the figure standing over her.
It was Jesse. "Fancy meeting you here, Buff," Jesse sneered. Buffy got back onto her feet, studying Jesse's frame. Something seemed very off about him since this morning. "Jesse?"
Jesse hummed sweetly with a predatory gleam in his eyes. "Jesse... yeah, that's what I was called," he replied as his face changed form.
Buffy stared at her school friend and now turned vampire. "... when I was still alive!"
Jesse cackled madly while observing how tears began to brim Buffy's eyes. "I'm so sorry I couldn't save you," she whispered softly.
Abruptly, Jesse stopped laughing and regarded her with an annoyed look in his crazed eyes. "No need to apologize to me, slayer," he said, almost regrettably.
"That way I won't regret this!" His fist hit Buffy head on. Jesse smiled, his sweet smile turned vicious as he gazed upon his former friend.
"I'm stronger now," he said with a contended purr. "No longer bound by the rules and social repressions and insecurities forced upon us
by all those condescending "know-it-all's" and screw up's of adults that doesn't know jack and doesn't care."
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Meanwhile at the Sunnydale cemetery
2 meters into the cemetery, 4th row, 3rd tombstone to the right just below a big oak tree, was where the body of a 5 year old rested.
Fog illuminated the name and date from ten years prior.
'Alexander Harris
1982-1987'
The earth was heavy and soft due to the fog, very easy for something to crawl out of, if one were inclined to such cravings.
Which, in this case, something - or rather someone - certainly was. A dirty arm sprung out of the mud.
Another soon followed the first one, and pushed the mud out of the way as a head of an adolescent male slowly raised.
The man heaved himself up out of the much too small child grave he'd rested in, and took a shallow gasp of air; his first one in a decade.
Xander was finally back. He didn't know why it was, and didn't know how, but then again he didn't care much for it.
It was all in the past, and all that mattered to him presently was his rumbling stomach.
His dark brown eyes flashed a faint hue of green, and his nose picked up a sweet scent of blood and strawberries.
Two seconds later, he'd left the cemetery, and his grave, never to return.
