Chapter Twenty-Five
by Lionheart
I O I O I
Absently stepping around a small cluster of overweight, pimply girls with glasses who were obviously new to hanging around the fringes, trying hard not to be seen, Polly was in sensory overload.
The reason for this was very simple, being awash in kids her own age was a new experience for her. Being raised as a Potential Slayer was akin to a very private school run by some of the strictest Catholic nuns. In fact many of the Potentials who did not become true Slayers ended up taking their vows.
Ties between the Catholic Church and the Watcher's Council were deep and went back for ages. Also, that way Potentials past the age where they could be Called could still serve the Council, offering their services as holy support playing backup to the field units.
It was all very serious and professional, which was why this giggling gaggle of schoolkids came as such a shock to her, as it was entirely outside the realm of her personal experience.
But, while it rattled her, she certainly wasn't about to show it.
Although there was more there to rattle the Slayer than ordinary school life, she didn't have the experience to know it. The first day of school opened up with a big assembly, wherein the entire student population got gathered in a big amphitheater where Principal Flutie made some remarks, then released them out into a big school fair taking up all of first period, unique starting this year.
Polly had never been to a Ren Fair, but she had certainly read enough books about the period to know her history, even put names to the outfits she was seeing as students manned booths, sold food, even put on plays while other groups performed old dances, sang archaic songs or played instruments.
In this, Polly was not alone, as a good deal of the students were shocked at the new entertainment this year as the various school groups petitioned for new members by showing off their skills. But none of them had any reason to suspect how much this owed to a certain conversation had among a small body of future students earlier that summer.
FLASHBACK
"A dance troupe," Marcie announced suddenly, to the surprise of those who knew her, drawing most of the attention to her presence, right in the wake of the successful false death of the candy witch.
Although the response was generally, "Huh?"
"A dance troupe or a theater company, something like Riverdance," Marcie expounded. "You know, for our group of 'partial Scoobs'? We need something where we can get a large group of people together and pretend not to be in charge of it. That way anyone looking for who is behind it doesn't find us, but whoever we pretend is in charge."
"Okay, granted, but how does a dance company do anything about teaching people to hunt vampires?" Jesse inquired.
"Nothing, on the surface," Marcie explained. "That's the beauty of it. We can all pretend together that we don't know anything about the night life. But we have a stage hand, or other 'mysterious figure' infiltrate the dance company to break the news to all of the members one-by-one. We can deny whatever person we use as some fly-by-night figure striking out at a random group, without any actual connection to us. But, once let in on the secret, members don't forget because they've got the rest of the company there to subtly reinforce that knowledge."
"How big a group are you thinking of?" Cathy wondered.
"As big as we can get it," Marcie shrugged.
Amy was already looking around their group. "We've got the core of a decent company already: two skilled male dancers, four female. Trading off who dances, sings or plays instruments, we've got enough to teach the rest of whomever we recruit, and act as stars during the performances."
"Not that I'm not flattered," Marcie asked, looking askance at the bard, "but what makes you think we'd be the stars? I was thinking of blending nicely into the background, just a few faces among many." And, dang it hurt! But that was what she'd been planning, mostly because she figured it would be easy.
Besides, all the comic books agreed it was safer to do it that way.
Amy laughed, a delighted, joyful response that had nothing of mockery in it, just simple joy over the delightful wrinkles of life. "Simple: Stage presence. The same thing that puts Cordy in charge of so many equally pretty, equally fashionable, equally rich girls her age. No one else our age is going to have half the confidence in ourselves we do. They can't. It's not possible. No one else can do the things we do, or match their skills to as many situations as we do, or face their own terrible fears the way we do. People worried about pimples and dates are just on a different level than those of us who are trying to save lives on a daily basis. There's no comparison. No matter how hard we try to blend in, we're going to stand out."
Both girls eyes tracked over to Xander. The boy looked good. Even aside from the new muscles, the new and improved Xand-man was increasingly drool-worthy in the girls' eyes. A nice car, good clothes (based on Cordy's day of fashion advice) and all that was nice, but what really made the greatest difference to all of them was the increased confidence he felt inside that mirrored itself outside.
There was no way to pretend this boy was a social outcast anymore. For that matter, with his new athletic build it was obvious he'd be encouraged to join a sports team or two.
Eyes then tracked, without speaking, over to Willow. It had been a few weeks since Xander and Willow had acknowledged their attraction for each other and it was obvious to all the girls how Willow thought that life couldn't get much better. Xander had been doing all the affectionate things that new boyfriends do with the skills of a refined lady's man inherited from his ancestor. They were teasing and flirting with each other constantly.
Once, Xander had mentioned Willow's penchant for baking apologies made candy magic oddly appropriate for her. The young woman had blushed slightly at the compliment then threw her arms around his neck, peppering his face with kisses - And Willow had spoken to all of the girls in blushing whispers about how his kisses made her knees weak and her toes curl.
The two of them were sweeter on each other than anything the candy witch had yet baked. Willow's mood was so high that it took a while for her to notice that Jesse was still giving her odd looks on occasion.
Jesse had not matured as fast as the rest of them and was still struggling at times over accepting that his childhood friend Willow had a gender.
Regardless, no way was anyone pretending this was a normal angst-filled teen romance. And those two were just the most obviously changed pair of their little group. Amy was nothing like her former pale shadow of a self, and the others would surely follow (provided they had any decent ancestors at all - which, as it later turned out, they did. Pretty stellar ones, in fact).
"Let's face it, we're going to stand out." Amy spread her hands helplessly, before cocking her head thoughtfully to the side. "Now, standing out can be good or bad, and personally I'd rather we take advantage of it to make ourselves the stars rather than be outcast goofballs who get tossed out of our own troupe!"
"I have to admit you've got a point there," Marcie agreed, secretly pleased that she'd not have to blend into the background, as she'd thought.
Willow had been typing away in the background. Satisfied with the information she'd brought up, she let out a little cry of triumph. "Ok! Adding together all of the freshmen who are taking band, chorus or drama classes at our school this year, I see sixty-four names, not including ourselves. How's that?"
Amy was mentally doing some math. "Well, the largest permanent groups I'm acquainted with are about the size we've already got: two guys, four girls. Only the gypsies had larger full time performance groups in my day; other than the monasteries, of course."
"So, you can't do it?" Jesse raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
"Don't be silly, of course I can!" she sang gaily. "I'm talking about permanent troupes! For temporary occasions we got whole villages dancing and singing. People PARTICIPATED in their music back then! I've organized hundreds of dancers and dozens of instruments of every possible combination! Whatever people had on hand or knew how to use! The only difference here is getting these to be 'performance' type numbers instead of everybody jumping in. They have a different flavor to the setup. What you guys go to a theater to see is more of what I consider 'Court style' entertainment, and most of what I like to do best is Folk. But I can arrange any style of performance you like."
"So, how would you divide up the sixty-four?" Xander queried.
Amy shrugged, unconcerned. "Two male leads, two female, eight to sixteen male 'chorus' dancers, and matching female, an equal number of musicians, add in some specialists and replacements in case any of the main players get sick or injured. Yeah, that's a pretty solid company right there. I've seen great things done with groups a third as big."
"We could do Riverdance with a group that size," her mother breathed, incidentally causing her daughter to grin.
"Oh, give us a few years, and I'll make something more Riverdance than Riverdance!" the blonde merry maid asserted.
Willow was sitting excited in her chair, practically bouncing out of it. "And by signing up for those classes, they've all technically agreed!"
"That does make the magic so much simple," Xander pondered.
"Huh? Magic?" Jesse was startled.
Xander tossed off an easy and accurate explanation to his friend. "Jess, we are all pretty incredible fourteen-year-olds. That's not something easy to hide, except among other exceptional fourteen-year-olds. So, if we were to sneak out in the dead of night to the homes of those sixty four freshmen, and give THEM some of the same hypno-training WE'VE been getting... well, even if it only applies to music, suddenly instead of trying to hide our talents in those areas like bonfires among weeds, we'd be bonfires among bonfires."
"Much simpler," Amy agreed. "We'll still stand out, but standing out among others who are standing out, the difference doesn't seem so big. And if we hold off on all of the combat and magic downloads until we can be sure they can be trusted with them..."
"We've got our partial Scoobs," Jesse saw at last, nodding.
"Mostly." Xander cautioned. "Remember, it is intrinsic in the 'partial Scoob' experiment to find people who can be trusted after being introduced to the idea of monsters in town. So at some point, sooner rather than later, they have to be let in on that little secret so we can see how they deal with it."
"And, to avoid scaring them to death for no reason, at the time we let them in on the big secret of the nightlife in town we'd also better be prepared to give them some idea of how to deal with it," Cathy added her own caution, leveling them with a direct stare, "Because otherwise we'd be driving some into the enemy camp - terrified people seeing no way to deal with it except to 'join the winning side'. I'm sure that's where so many of our horrible cops came from."
"You have a point," Xander admitted.
"So, we have to decide what is an acceptable 'minimum kit' to carry in order to be both aware of the dangers of this town, and minimally outfitted to deal with that," Willow resumed.
"Not really," Jesse kicked back and lolled his head to one side. "Think about it. What you've described is pretty much the situation my mom put my sisters into: aware of the problem, but NOT outfitted to fight it."
"Yes, but she did add a few things, like the Xander-Dex and magic in general, that I'm not quite willing to let just anyone have," Willow chewed a finger.
"Point," Jesse conceded.
Xander sat up, looking seriously around his circle of friends. "But we've got tons of ideas we've outgrown and are no longer using: the idea of having Jesse's sisters pilot remote control planes hunting undead, for one. Using fireworks to burn vampires for another. Those are good ideas, but no longer the main thrust of our efforts. So if we share them..."
Lights seemed to go on all around him.
"Small groups of demon hunters could crop up all over town," Willow breathed, impressed, before bursting out into a huge, warm smile.
Cathy was nodding. "That could seriously complicate the mayor's efforts to repopulate the local demonic underworld."
"Better still, we'll have the presence of other demon hunting groups to disguise our activities." Amy chirped. "Best place to hide a needle is not in a haystack, but in among a pile of other needles."
END FLASHBACK
I O I O I
School was, well, school. Having been across campus enough time under guise of arranging their schedules while actually plotting their secret boltholes, weapons caches and escape routes, the campus was no mystery to a certain set of teens.
Heck, a detailed map had been part of one of their hypnotism downloads! It was just too useful to know one's territory for that home turf advantage, especially things that did not occur on any student handouts, like the location of service tunnels, equipment lockers and so on.
You had to know where to find the tanks for the fire sprinkler system if your resident holy person were going to bless them, after all!
They'd also done an exhaustive search for bugs and microphones, both of the mundane and magical sort. Because they had to know what level of surveillance was there if they were going to circumvent it. But the place was reassuringly lax.
The students around campus were the typical mix of returning older years and gullible young faces shining with newness, easily picked out by their confusion and the class schedules gripped in their hands as they searched for room numbers.
On course, on the first day of school was also when the "We Hate Cordelia Chase" club's final revenge got revealed at last.
It took a while to be noticed, as Queen C and her Cordettes were anxious not to be seen. Still, Willow's face was white as she stumbled into the newspaper office crammed into the second floor above the school's museum, which was also the old gymnasium, too small to be used anymore. The school newspaper took up the entire second floor, and was the only course held in that building, but felt cramped for all of that.
By carefully arranging their schedules the Scoobies had managed to get all of their classes together, even if that came with a minor sacrifice or two. They were going to take woodshop, but with all of the rescheduling they'd done for honors courses, the school newspaper was the only class they could take in third period, literally the only one left that had openings. And the class had openings for a reason, the entire school newspaper staff had died end of last year. They were still looking for a replacement teacher, by last report.
Still, being the only ones in the building as yet, and having double checked it for bugs, the news could at last be talked about, as Marcie immediately burst forth into laughter. "HaHa! Did you SEE them!!"
"How could I NOT?" Amy giggled.
"I didn't mean to go so far," Willow whispered.
Jesse casually unfolded himself into a seat, managing to look suave while doing so. "So, who did what?"
Xander raised a hand, perching on the edge of the vacant teacher's desk. "I presume we are talking of the minor curses that were so obviously placed on Cordy and her Cordettes? In that case I was the one responsible for casting one earlier this summer that doubled their weight. Seeing as how it's magical, no amount of dieting would take off even an ounce."
Jesse nodded, pouring himself a glass of what turned into soda before he drank it. He toasted Xander with the glass. "Excellent!"
Amy soothed a mourning Willow, rubbing her arm. "Oh, c'mon! That part is actually not so bad! They were underweight before. Now they're slightly over. At that size they'd fit right in during the middle ages, where wealthy women were expected to be a little plump."
"Of course, during today's stick figure fashions, they stand out like mules at a classic dance," Jesse snorted, before sitting up. "Okay! Who else did what? We all saw the collection of minor curses they were under."
Willow raised a timid hand. "I halved their eyesight. That's where they all got the thick glasses they are wearing. No contacts are possible at that level of correction."
Xander cocked his head, explaining to the group at large, "They've mocked her since kindergarten about being a 'four-eyes nerd in training'."
"I caused them to break them out in the thick layers of pimples they've got." Amy swirled her long hair as she happily declared her part.
"My contribution to this masterpiece was to give them frequent, and fairly nasty, odor problems." Jesse humbly placed a hand on his chest.
"I ruined their hair, so it's all limp and greasy, no matter how shampooed," Marcie confessed. At first they'd all been surprised this serene and churchlike girl could take actions that hurt someone, until she'd pointed out that her great ancestress was a warrior, and the God they served was fully capable of raining fire and brimstone to incinerate entire cities at need.
She wouldn't hurt the innocent, but a blow upside the head to the wicked to hopefully get them to regret their actions and change their ways lay fully within her purview. As did eliminating those that would not.
Leaning back, Jesse summarized, saluting the room, "Total effect: they have gone from the absolute top of the social pyramid to the absolute bottom in the space of a single summer. That attractiveness that was always their stock in trade is now gone. Hmph, as a mere side effect: doubling their weight caused them to no longer fit their super-fashionable clothes."
The group then grew silent, none of them daring to speak of the previous week's conversations in unsecured surroundings. Minors spells were nothing. It seemed like half the town had connections to the occult. So while they did not advertise their abilities in that department, neither did they think those were too unusual, so so long as they concealed the extent, they were fine.
However, the other business they'd discussed was a different story. The old concept of 'Secret' vs 'Top Secret'. The fact they knew spells was a secret and would be hidden, but could be discovered without destroying them, so could be talked over in hushed tones during moments of privacy.
The fact they ran a secret, underground resistance group opposing the local government and their undead toadies was even more secret, and would not be discussed outside of the most secure surroundings, which meant one of their heavily warded homes or bases.
Outside of that, not a word. That was the rule. And it was a good one, as it was possible to be overheard even when you thought you were alone.
And so it proved, as a tall man in a grey overcoat stepped out from behind some overstuffed file cabinets, obviously preoccupied as he returned from investigating his small office and giving no sign if he'd overheard. "Ah, I see you are all on time. Very good. My name is Professor Merrick, and I'll be your faculty advisor and editor this year."
There came some thumps on the narrow staircase behind them, and a blonde girl appeared clutching a bookbag in one hand just as the bell rang. "Sorry," she apologized. "This class is a little hard to find."
"Indeed it is," Professor Merrick agreed. "Students, allow me to introduce Polly Summers, a new transfer student this year. Now if you'll be seated, I'll take roll and we can decide who shall be our columnists for this publication."
I O I O I
Author's Notes:
Ain't I a stinker?