Chapter Seven: No Surrender
Buffy watches impressed as Dawn drops to the ground. Doing a neat little scissors move to the vampire's leg the young brunette takes him to the ground with her. The vampire rolls to his back just as Dawn lunges forward driving the stake into his chest. She waits expectantly but nothing happens and a moment later she realizes she missed his heart. The vampire shoves her back then springs back to his feet.
Madison had made a few keen observations about Dawn to her several days ago. The young girl had been demanding answers about Dawn's preternatural strength and speed. Buffy hadn't given her any, since she really didn't have any to give. The only thing she could think of was the fact that the monks had made Dawn out of a piece of her, to some extent a clone that had at one time been a mystical energy known as the key. Did that mean that Dawn was a slayer as well. Was she going to be forced to live the same fate that Buffy herself was forced to live with.
Or was she something different.
Not for the first time she truly wishes that Giles or Willow were around to give her some answers.
The observations that Madison had made were things that Buffy herself should have noticed a long time ago. If she had actually paid attention to her sister like she was suppose to be doing. Seeing her now as she blocks, parries, and avoids a series of punches and kicks thrown at her by the fledgling she can't help but wonder how she could have missed it to begin with. She knew the answer, it was so obvious it was glaring. She hadn't wanted to see it so she didn't.
She had to give the young redhead credit. In just three short weeks she had managed to turn Dawn into something of a fighter.
Buffy winces as her sister takes a hard shot to the chin. It doesn't seem to faze Dawn though as she comes back with a nasty front kick to his groin. The vampire clutches his privates as he drops to his knees. Dawn then slams her stake into his heart, and this time he turns to dust a heartbeat later.
Buffy quickly replaces the proud grin with a stern scowl as Dawn turns a jubilant smile on her. The young girl was just about bursting at the seems with excitement. "Did you see that?" She make a smell exploding gesture as she opens her hands spreading her fingers, "poof..."
"You missed his heart the first time," Buffy points out critically.
Dawn waves it off with a bubbly, "but I got it the second time." If possible her grin gets even wider as she bounces on her toes. "My first vamp," She gushes proudly.
"And last," Buffy says popping her balloon. Dawn's face plummets back to earth even faster then the vamp had turned to dust. "At least until you can get the staking down to one thrust, one dust."
"Don't even tell me you never missed the heart," she challenges her sister.
Buffy sighs dejectedly, "once," she admits as she picks up the weapon bag.
"Ah-ha," Dawn gloats.
"It was my first vamp," she explains.
"So wasn't mine," Dawn replies unwilling to let the subject go. "Next time..."
"Next time you run," Buffy commands. "Until I say you're ready slaying is not going to become your after school hobby."
"Please, I am so not looking forward to that," Dawn complains mournfully.
"I can't believe they rebuilt it," Buffy said.
"I know," Dawn agrees in an equally horrified voice. "Do you know what you're going to do about Madison?" She asked a slight gleam in her eye.
Buffy takes a cautious look at her sister out of the corner of her eye. It was easy to see the signs of a major crush developing there. The way she brightens at just the sound of the girl's name. How Madison walking into the same room would bring a wide smile to Dawn's face as if she was coming alive. How her sister would cast wistful glances at the obstinate redhead.
In the three weeks since Madison's arrival she didn't think there was a day that went by were the two girls didn't hang out for the majority of the day. So maybe it was more along the lines of a full blown crush. Buffy could admit that even if she was having a hard time accepting the fact that her sister was attracted to girl.
Madison bore enough bruises to prove it.
It wasn't just that she was attracted to a girl. If it had been she thought that she could deal with that. It was the fact Madison was a potential slayer, and not just any potential but from what Travers said the next in line. For the next four years if Faith should die Madison was going to be the slayer that was called next.
Buffy wishes that she could spare her sister the pain that she was likely to feel. The chances of Faith surviving four more years, even in prison, were unlikely to say the least. Which meant at most Madison had maybe another ten years to her life. A fact the girl herself was unaware of.
"What about Madison?" Buffy repeats after several minutes.
Michael glares at the small blond standing in front of him. More at what she had just told him. With his arms crossed over his pert breast, and a prominent scowl plastered on his small face he looks like a picture of an angry young woman. "You've got to be kidding me," he scoffs indignantly to the information he's just heard.
Buffy sighs exasperated by the days events. "It's not exactly what I was expecting either," she tells Madison. "But that's what the council told me."
Michael gives a sharp shake of his head. His long, vibrant red hair slashing from side to side with the motion as he asks, "so what does this mean?"
"It means that agreement we had a few weeks ago. It's now a reality," she answers.
He grins at the blonde, a slight quirk to the corners of his lips, "does this mean I get to call you mom now?"
Buffy pales visibly as she gasps, "don't you dare." Michael's grin broadens at her response and he can't help the small giggle. Buffy gives Madison a polite smile as she tells the young girl, "but tomorrow we're going to have to do some school shopping."
Michael shrugs as he replies, "not a problem. What does Dawn need?" He inquires as he continues to grin. Despite Buffy's continued admonishments not to he still bought whatever food, or supplies the house was in need of. He had more money then he knew what to do with so he didn't see the problem with spending it if it made their lives easier. As far as he was concerned it was the least he could do to repay them for what they were doing for him.
Buffy shakes her head as she says, "nothing. You do," she informs Madison with a tight smile.
Michael's eyes go wide as his mouth opens slightly at her words. "You've got to be kidding me?"
"This is ridiculous," Michael bitches to Dawn as he paces the width of his room strumming his guitar to an erratic rhythm. "I haven't set foot in a classroom since my..." He stops with a quick glance at Dawn, who was sitting on the edge of his bed, as he realizes what he had been about to say. He hadn't been in a classroom since the day his parents had been killed when he was seventeen. "Since my watcher took from Michael a few years ago," he finishes.
Dawn shakes her lightly as she stands up from the edge of the bed. "I'm sure if you talk to Buffy she'll..." She stops as laughter starts floating out of the amplifier. Even after nearly a month she was still amazed by what sounds Madison was capable of creating with her guitar. The weirdest had been the night Madison held her end of the conversation through her guitar without ever uttering a sound.
"We already tried talking," he says quietly. Noticing the expectant look in Dawn's eyes he continues by saying, "lets just say that we agreed to disagreed."
The brunette sighs. She didn't think her sister and Madison were ever going to agree on anything. Sometimes she thought the two of them simple disagreed about something just because they didn't want to agree on anything. "So that means you're going to school?"
Michael didn't miss the excitement that bubbles up in Dawn's voice. "Unless I can think of someway out of it. Which I doubt, then yeah. I'll be another proud student of Sunnydale High."
"Any idea as to what grade you'll be in? I mean it's been what three, four years since you've gone to school. You were barely out of grammar school," she points out delicately.
Michael rolls his narrow shoulders a moment before he answers, "there's some test they're forcing me to take." It had been over ten years since the last test he had taken. He still didn't know what the results were, but he could take a fairly accurate guess considering his track record. He had never bothered applying himself in school, had never considered school to be all that important to how well you did in the real world. Ten years and twenty five million dollars later his opinion hadn't changed.
Michael sits in the plastic and steel chair just in front of the wood and steel desk, though lounges would be a better way to describe the posture his lithe young feminine form had taken. A pair of greenish tinted sunglasses cover his large, light colored eyes. His long, narrow fingers lace together behind his head, a few strands of his brilliant red hair were caught between his nimble fingers. His lean, shapely legs stretch out in front of him crossing at the ankles. With his arms back behind his head, and his legs extended out in front, his developing chest was pushed even further forward. The light burgundy sweater, Dawn had talked him into wearing, hitches upwards ever so slightly exposing his tone abdomen.
It was only the second class of the day and already he was bored out of his mind. He had thought that after a decade long absence from school that they might have come up with something new, but so far it was all the same old same old. After little more then an hour he already found the classes to be as useless now as he had the first time he had tried to muddle his way through.
His first encounter with the Principal told him he still didn't like authority figures. He found the teachers drivel to be, if possible, even more meaningless then he remembers. He didn't have much to go on after only an hour or so, but he didn't really care either. He felt that he was right and that was the only thing that matters to him.
About the only thing he was looking forward to was gym and the girls locker room. It was something that he would have given his right arm to get into his first time through high school. It was like the promise land and now he had his own personal key. All he had to do was last that long without snapping and taking out the teaching staff.
The opening riff to Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water fills the room cutting into the teacher speech. Michael lifts his cellphone from the desk with a slight shrug as he flips the phone open. "Yeah," he says as he places the small device next to his ear. The expression on his face changes to concern as he listens to Buffy. "Right," he agrees getting up from his desk, "no of course not," he says as he begins walking towards the door hanging up his phone.
"Excuse me Miss Rose," Mrs. Lodriox calls out as the young girl crosses the room.
"Sorry," Michael responds not sounding sorry in the slightest.
"Don't you," she begins as the redhead grabs hold of the door handle, twist, jerks the door open and slips out through the opening before she can finish. With a light huff she goes over to the schools internal phone. This was the first day of school and that wasn't the type of behavior she was going to allow in her class.
A few minutes later Michael slips through the basement door unnoticed by any living being. That didn't mean his actions went completely unnoticed. The First watches the young girl with a keen interest as she shifts from Buffy's to Madison's form. The evil entity smirks lightly as she says, "I thought I looked familiar. Guess I'm gonna have to find out what happened here," she says just before vanishing.
Michael watches from the end of a side corridor as Buffy stares, he'd almost say dumbfounded or awe struck, at the blonde hair man standing on the other side of the door. He was going to call out only he couldn't seem to find his voice as he continues to wonder about the expression on Buffy's face. He had never seen that kind of look on anyone's face before let alone a woman he found as strong, self assured, and self reliant as he found Buffy to be. It was almost like she had forgotten everything else in the world exists.
He reaches out with his hand to softly caress the side of her face. "Buffy, duck," the man says to her.
"What? Duck? There's a duck?" The three questions dumbly tumble out of her mouth right on top of each other.
Suddenly Buffy drops to the ground as if she was hit upside the head by something. Michael stares, but there was nothing there. The tiny blonde quickly kicks out at something then hops to her feet and swings the door back as if she was using it to hit someone before slipping inside the room and pulling the door close behind her. Now the entire corridor was completely empty and he just now realizes he hasn't moved from his spot since first spotting Buffy. Then again Buffy had told him not to do anything until she called back.
He leans back against the wall a speculative look falling over his face. If he didn't know better he would say that was a look of pure love, or maybe just seeing something so unexpected it had thrown her for a complete loop. Personally he prefers the pure love theory.
Several minutes pass for the young red hair woman as he leans against the wall before his phone begins playing the opening riff again. Flipping the phone open he answers with his normal, "yeah. What? No, of course I'm not down in the basement," he says with a little squeak. With a quick look back at the steel door he rushes back the way he had come. "Yeah, well. I had to use the bathroom that's why you don't hear no teacher yapping. You did make me mesmerize the school's blueprints. Little doll in bathroom. Destroy it. Not a problem, on my way even as we speak," he finishes hanging up.
Stepping out of the girl's locker room with his long red hair glistening wetly Michael couldn't help but smile broadly. It was like a dream come true. He had always known showering with twenty teenage women would be an erotic experience, but he never imagined it would be quite that erotic, and not being able to gratify himself was like an exquisite form of torture. Now all he had to do was find himself an unoccupied restroom and he'd be able to relieve that tension as well.
One thing he had decided on while showering was that there was no way he was going to be able to stay celibate, or chaste, for the next three days, let alone the next three years. He still couldn't bring himself to make any kind of move on Dawn. At sixteen, ,what small amount of morals he had, just found her two young for his twenty-eight year old mentality. Just like the thought of a twenty year old going after him in his fifteen year old body disturbs him.
Seventeen to nineteen though. In-between those ages he found he had no qualms, feelings of guilt or remorse, felt no anxiety what so ever when he imagined having sex with women within those ages. He knew it was something of a cope out. That there wasn't much, if any, difference between sixteen and seventeen. It was just his way of avoiding any type of real relationship that could develop between him and Dawn.
Plus there was also the fact that if he tried to put the moves on Dawn then Buffy would really kick his ass during their training sessions.
Slinging his heavy denim backpack over his shoulder he heads for the door. Halfway there the intercom crackles to life as an old, leathery sounding voice says, "Madison Rose. Please report to the office. Madison Rose, please report to the office. Thank you," and then clicks off.
Sighing deeply Michael heads for the headsman.
"Sixty-five minutes," Principal Robin Wood informs the young girl, who wears boredom like a mask, sitting in the small chair in front of his desk. "Do you have any idea what sixty-five minutes represent?"
"Thirty-nine hundred seconds," Michael responds flippantly.
"No..."
"Yeah," Michael cuts in. "Sixty times sixty-five equals..."
"It equals the amount of time before I had my first call from a teacher about a disciplinary matter concerning one of her students," he cuts her off raising his voice significantly. If it effects her in the slightest it doesn't show. "Now do you know who this disciplinary matter involves?"
Michael looks around the room before looking up at Wood with a dumbfound look glaze over his face as he inquires, "um, could it be me?"
"Cut the act," Wood snaps.
Unable to resist he replies, "who says it's an act." He couldn't help but find it amusing at how easy he could push the principal's buttons.
Wood shakes his head as he gets up from behind his desk. "why don't you tell me what was so urgent you had to get out of bio?"
"It was personal, not the kind of thing you can just shout out in the middle of class," Michael answers with a little squirm hoping the it was personal excuse would work. Especially considering his other one was so outlandish he didn't think he could get through it without bursting into laughter.
"Something you couldn't tell the teacher in private?"
Michael takes a deep breath to prepare himself. Either Wood would expel him for the rest of the year, in which case his problems were solved, or he'd have a heart attack, in which case his problem was solved. "You wanna know why I walked out of class so bad? Fine. Being around all those hot young bodies was getting me all worked up. I mean the tight sweaters, pants that are practically painted on, tops that are so tight you can practically see nipples jutting through the soft material, skirts so short that when the girls bend..."
"All right," he cuts her off in a slightly strangled voice. "Enough already."
Michael smirks to himself as Wood turns away. "I had to find myself a nice private bathroom so I could. You know."
This was not what Wood wants to be hearing on his first day. Madison was a lesbian, he could deal with that. He doubts if she was the only one in the school. That she was using the bathrooms as her own private masturbation chambers was what he was having difficulties with. He sits down in his chair facing her, "look," he begins placing his palms flat on his desk. "That you have... Needs, desires, urges. I can understand that. What I can't do is allow you to..."
"Masturbate," Michael supplies into Wood's pause.
"... on school grounds. You're suspended the rest of the week."
"Cool three days off," Michael says a bright smile splitting his smooth face.
Wood shakes his head with a grin, "in school suspension," he informs the young girl. His own grin widens considerably as her face falls with comprehension.
Buffy smiles lightly at Madison's version of what had happened in Principal Wood's office. Even Dawn couldn't help smiling, though her cheeks had colored slightly upon hearing the excuse the redhead had given Wood as to why she walked out of the class without permission. Xander couldn't help but laugh openly at the hole the young girl had dug for herself while he drove down the road.
The fact that he was driving was quite possibly the only thing keeping Michael from slapping him upside his head at the moment. He still didn't like the construction worker, but he was learning to tolerate him just a little better over the last couple weeks.
"I told you on the phone to stay in class," Buffy says into the silence following Xander's short bark off laughter.
Michael shrugs as he says, "yeah well. Did you actually expect me to listen?"
Buffy looks over into the back seat as she answers by saying, "actually. Yes, I did."
Michael rolls his thin shoulders lightly. Buffy had known him for more then a month now, she should realize by now that more often then not he was going to go his own way. "So who was the blonde you ran into down there? And what was with the whole fighting the air thing you were doing? Thought you said there were apparitions or something like that down there?" He inquires quickly. The only one he really cared about getting an answer to was the first one, but he didn't want it to seem like he was prying into her personal business even if he was. He wasn't however expecting the reactions his questions got.
Buffy simply looks as if she was fish out of water. Xander, not that he cares, looks as if he was planning to go off and commit mass murder. Dawn looks somewhere between the two. Confusion and anger. Never a very good mix of emotions on anyone, let alone her.
He suddenly wishes he could take back the questions. That his mouth didn't open and the words didn't spring out. This was what he gets whenever he speaks without thinking. "Okay," Michael says slowly. "I just said something that pissed everyone off. Someone want to fill me in?"
"No," Buffy answers shortly turning back around. She didn't know how much Madison had seen in the basement, but if the redhead saw that much she had seen far too much as far as Buffy was concerned.
"It was Spike," Xander says immediately after ignoring the tiny blonde's command. "He's the vampire that tried to rape Buffy," he explains harshly.
Michael tries to work those pieces of information around what he saw in the basement. Vampire, bad. Attempted rapist, even worse. Yet Buffy hadn't acted like someone confronting the person that had attempted to rape her. He wasn't sure what she had been acting like but he knew it wasn't that.
A person doesn't go all goggle-eyed over seeing the person that tried to rape them, unless they were imagining a thousand different ways to kill them. Even now, she wasn't denying it, but there was something in the way that she sat that just screams at him that there was more to it then anybody else knew. Facts and events that she didn't want anyone else to learn.
Taking a deep breath he sinks his slight frame down into the back seat and decides not to enjoy the silence of the ride home.
________________________________________________________________________
No Surrender - Bruce Springsteen
We busted out of class had to get away from those fools
We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school
Tonight I heart the neighborhood drummer sound
I can feel my heart begin to pound
You say you're tired and you just want to close your eyes and follow your dreams down
We made a promise we swore we'd always remember
No retreat, believe me, no surrender
Like soldiers in the winter's night with a vow to defend
No retreat, believe me, no surrender
Now young faces grow sad and old and hearts of fire grow cold
We swore blood brothers against the wind
I'm ready to grow young again
And hear your sister's voice calling us home across the open yards
Believin' we could cut someplace of our own
With these drums and these guitars
We made a promise we swore we'd always remember
No retreat, believe me, no surrender
Blood brothers in the stormy night with a vow to defend
No retreat, believe me, no surrender
Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim
The walls of my room are closing in
But it's good to see your smiling face and to hear your voice again
We could sleep in the twilight by the river side
With a wide open country in our hearts
And these romanics dreams in our heads
We made a promise...
