Chapter Thirty-four: Pre-trial
The past few months since Halloween had been strange, to say the least. Aside from the regular dangers of the Hellmouth, there had also been the internal changes that had required a great deal of coping to deal with, resulting in some remarkable, and some terrible, changes to the youths Giles had watched over.
On the decidedly more remarkable side was Willow, for whom the memories of the assassin had, once she learned to accept them, given her a whole new perspective and confidence in life. Willow had learned to accept the fact that she was Willow, and no one else, a concept many people spent their whole lives struggling to learn. She now had a sort of inner peace that reflected in all of the things she did, a centre of absolute control. Her studies, be they academic or magical, had improved incredibly from their already great position, and there had been other changes too. She had, in practice sessions with the others, developed the poise and grace of a dancer… or rather an assassin, but it was much nicer to think of her as a dancer.
It was little surprise that she had already attracted a boyfriend, a quiet young man with the name of Oz who was the lead guitarist of a local band. Their relationship was rapidly drawing the young man into the world of the night, but he seemed to accept it with a frightening degree of stoicism and laconic wit.
On the somewhat less remarkable part of the scale, there was Buffy. While Giles had initially been thrilled with her new found devotion to duty and learning about all of the dangers of the world, his enthusiasm had quickly been tempered by the fact that Buffy's newfound focus included a newfound ruthless demeanour. Buffy now wanted to spare no expense when it came to killing vampires and demons. While Giles had managed to talk her out of trying to acquire military grade heavy weaponry, although the flamethrowers idea had been quite the argument, she had managed to talk him into obtaining arbalests to replace the regular crossbows they had been using.
She vowed to upgrade to large calibre firearms and explosive ammunition once it became practical to do so.
Then, deep in the terrible side of things, there was Xander. Xander was handling his situation astonishingly well, but unfortunately his situation was beyond what he could handle. Since Halloween, he had grown pale and twitchy, always on the verge of exploding from the slightest provocation. His grades, never spectacular, had slipped, as he found himself spending more and more time focusing on not losing his mind. His body was falling apart on a fundamental level, the energy that filled him keeping him from proper rest. He had admitted, painfully, to Giles that he had to spend many nights just running himself into the ground simply so that he could sleep. He was painfully thin, most of his fat burned away to reveal whip-thin cords of muscle wound tighter than steel wires on a suspension bridge.
The worst bit though was his home situation… or rather the lack of one. Amongst one of the admissions he had made to Giles when confronted, he had explained that he after a week of living with his parents he had simply left and now wandered the streets of Sunnydale, an incredibly dangerous activity that Xander acknowledged as being stupid… but if he hadn't left he would have lost it. As he had joked, at least when he had to work out his frustrations it was on creatures that deserved it and no one cared about.
A dark part of Giles felt that since Xander's parents had not raised any fuss after he had left perhaps they fit those criteria all too well. He had since managed to get Xander into a safer location, but it was still something that Xander was clearly uncomfortable talking about.
Then, on the furthest end of the spectrum, there was poor, poor Cordelia. She had not worn one of the costumes Ethan Rayne, curse his name, had enchanted, but that just meant that she had to carry the scars of that night without anything in compensation. The only glimmer of light to come out of that situation was the fact that the young woman had discovered who her real friends were. Xander, Buffy, and Willow had all rallied behind Cordelia and were aiding her in whatever ways they could. Of particular note was the way she and Buffy had managed to bring lace and veils in style. Of course, when someone had implied that such things were demeaning to women, what had occurred had Xander quipping, "Scary ladies deserve scary lace."
Perhaps that was the brightest element that could be recovered from this whole tragic affair: the way Buffy and all of her friends had stuck together despite what had happened to them. Willow never would have found her strength, Buffy would have let her new ruthlessness completely take over, Xander quite probably would have gone insane, and Cordelia would probably be suicidal.
Giles just hoped that with all of the problems with someone trying to reassemble the Judge, they would weather this storm as they had the all the previous ones.
The group, minus Buffy and Angel who had gone to dispose of the arm of the Judge, was relaxing, as much as possible for them, in the abandoned warehouse they preferred to use for training purposes. Once mostly the domain of Buffy and Giles, it had come to be the gathering place when they were not researching in the library as it allowed them to be a touch freer with weapons than at school.
"So this is what you do at night," Oz noted in deadpan at the collection of gymnastics equipment and weapons racks scattered about.
"Yeah. I would call it our own little Batcave, but we and bats don't exactly get along," Xander replied as he took up position on his favourite meditation pillow. Xander now knew multiple forms of meditation and was quite good at it, but unfortunately having the berserker rage of a demigod stuck in him made achieving enlightenment a somewhat difficult task.
Cordelia drifted wraith-like behind him, her figure obscured by laces and veils, but as everyone who ever mentioned the word 'burkha' around her learned, she was submissive to no one. It was just that the plastic surgery she needed took a long time, even with her father's money, and so it still hurt to talk without proper lips and she still disliked being seen, especially by strangers. But she would be damned before she hid in her house or some clinic somewhere. She was stronger than that.
And she would be doubly damned if she were to do anything as gross as walk around with visible bandages. So Buffy, who after having a hundred plus year old lady stuck in her head developed a sudden affinity for lace and petticoats and skirts capable of concealing heavy machine guns, had made it her mission to bring back the fashions of an older era in Southern California so that Cordy wouldn't look out of place.
It had been really quite touching, almost as much as the way Xander tried to care for her in his own stupid, berserker sort of way. When everyone else had been abandoning her, he and the others had stuck by her side, and she felt she definitely owed them. So the fact that she helped calm down the chronically ill Xander meant that she stuck to him like glue whenever possible.
Of course, when Cordy asked Xander to take off his shirt that raised an eyebrow from Oz, who asked dryly, "So you… an empty warehouse… three girls… every night?"
Smiling thinly, Xander took off his shirt to reveal an intricate pattern of symbols all over his torso, while Cordelia opened up a small kit with paint brushes and the like. She also flipped up her veil to reveal her skull-like face, the scarred tissue still mostly stretched over nearly bare bone except for a few places where the reconstructive surgery was adding shape back. They still hadn't managed to give her back proper eyelids, which made the veil extra important as it helped keep dust out of her eyes and a heavier one was necessary for sleeping. Right now though, she wanted to be able to see what she was doing clearly.
"Hmm… while a nice thought, I haven't managed to talk any of them into that sort of thing yet," Xander replied, earning him a swat from Cordelia as she mixed her paints.
"So what's with the tribal man stuff?" Oz asked.
"Suppressive seals. They're really neat. I figured them out first, but Cordelia really took up their study when we realized they could be used to help Xander with his… problem," Willow explained happily before trailing off at the end, looking nervously at Xander.
Waving it off, Xander said, "Willow, we've trusted him this much, he deserves to know about the Hulk-thing."
"Hulk-thing?" Oz asked.
"You remember Halloween?" Xander asked in turn. Upon Oz raising a single eyebrow as if to say 'What do you think?' Xander waved it off and said, "Okay, dumb question, most of the West Coast remembers Halloween. Anyway, there was the whole turning into monsters and aliens and fanatics-"
"Oh my," Oz noted.
Smiling at that, Xander continued, "And anyway, the guy I turned into was considerably stronger than most. Unfortunately, he was also kind of cursed and the curse carried on to me even after I got my body back. I say kind of in that it wasn't exactly him who was curse, but I got the same results in the end. The pros: enhanced strength and stamina. The cons: said strength and stamina are linked to a psychotic rage that if ever triggered fully will become permanent and ultimately fatal. Oh, and have I mentioned that I now have nearly overwhelming cravings for raw red meat and blood?"
Oz winced and he said, "Wow. That sucks man."
"I know. Willow gets all of the cool superpowers and all I get is 'Xander smash!'" Xander complained sarcastically.
Having gone off to a corner, Willow said, "Hey! I did not get all of the cool super powers."
"Then what are you doing over there?" Xander asked as Cordelia began to repair the seals on his body that had worn out since the previous day.
There was a sheepish pause before Willow admitted, "I'm trying to use sympathetic magic, a hilt, a large quantity of mercury and a piece of the costume I wore on Halloween to recreate a phase sword."
"A phase sword," Xander deadpanned.
"What's a phase sword?" Oz asked.
"It's a sword that can cut through anything," Xander replied.
"Come on, it would be really useful against heavily armoured opponents like this Judge guy," Willow pointed out.
"I thought he couldn't be harmed?" Xander asked.
"Not by forged weapons. This is a magical construct of a weapon made by processes that are so alien that forging can't possibly enter into it," Willow responded.
"You know those sorts of statements never really made sense to me. I mean, sure you know what won't kill you, but there are all sorts of other stuff out there. By the way it's worded, a pointy stick could kill the Judge," Oz pointed out.
This caused considerably amusement as everyone within earshot imagined a nigh invulnerable demon with a pointy stick jammed in an eye keeling over dead. Of course, the fact that the primary weapon of a Slayer was a pointy stick added new connotations to any possible conflict.
Xander added in a moment later, "Yeah, now that I think about it, all sorts of things aren't forged that would really hurt to get hit with: rocks, baseball bats, a block of C4 with a detonator counting down to zero, bullets, uh… even good old fashioned fisticuffs should all fall under the heading of 'not forged'."
"Fisticuffs?" Oz asked in an equally amused and bemused tone.
"It's a real word! I have culture you know," Xander protested, eliciting a snort of derision from Cordelia. Xander retorted, "I have culture beyond the stuff growing between my toes!"
"Hey man, I wasn't saying it was bad, just kind of funny," Oz replied.
"Well, let's just say that all of our vocabularies are larger than they used to be," Xander said.
"Gothic," Oz said knowingly.
Everyone capable of blinking looked at him and Oz said, "So it would seem that you all now know that I did in fact get a costume from Ethan's this Halloween."
"What did you turn into?" Willow asked as she came up behind Oz, curious.
"If I said my music and interpretive dance improved afterwards…" Oz answered.
"Ooh. Sorry about smashing you into the pavement," Xander replied sheepishly.
Shrugging it off, Oz said, "No worries man. The Harlequin actually knew that was going to happen, and in fact wanted it to happen."
Willow however had perked up and she asked excitedly, "Did you practice any of that stuff? Because it would be neat to add an Eldar martial art to the ones we already have. I bet the two of us could also pull off some wicked dance moves."
Oz raised an eyebrow, and in answer Willow said, "I was the assassin."
"So you're a ninja now?" Oz asked.
"Kind of…" Willow replied cheerily.
Cordelia rolled her eyes and groaned in annoyance while switching paint colours for her work on Xander.
"Oh let them have their fun," Xander chided.
The moment however was ruined by Buffy practically kicking the door to the warehouse off its hinges, her entrance backlit by a bolt of lightning. Walking in from the storm, soaking wet and clearly upset, she said, "We need big guns."
"Buffy! What happened?" Willowed asked, concerned for her friend.
Visibly shaking with outrage, Buffy said, "Right now I have three things I need to kill. The first is the Judge, now completed by Spike and Drusilla. The second is whatever idiot thought that putting conditions on Angel's curse and neglecting to tell him was a good idea. The third is Angelus, that vampiric bastard!"