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Musical Interlude
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After the first few paragraphs, this chapter is meant to be skim-read at a fairly quick tempo.
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In.

Out.

In.

Out.

In.

"You okay?"

Buffy looked over at Oz, fiddling with his bass.

"Fine. You?"

"I'm fairly relaxed," he replied.

You? Shocking. Truly.

She adjusted her halter top and glanced at her airdrumming sister. In a fit of make-over inspiration, Dawn had attacked her own outfit with one of the rolls of black electric tape that hung around backstage. She now looked a bit like a Maggie Kim that had forgotten to take her shirt off first. She was also bouncing on the balls of her feet in giddy excitement.

Xander was fiddling with his mic and talking to Andrew. Spike was tapping his guitar with the restless energy all of them could feel building up around them. The air had an edge to it, and no one seemed really sure what was going to happen, except that tonight was going to be different.

Anya glanced at her watch, then spoke into her walkytalky. "Okay, cue house lights."

In the flashlighted darkness backstage, they could sense the overhead lighting had dropped on the other side of the curtains by the sudden intensifying of the crowd noise. Xander stuck his earpiece in and gave Anya a quick kiss before leading the way onstage.

The crowd welcomed him with a mighty roar.

The rest of the band followed, eliciting a nearly solid wall of sound. Dawn grinned as she made her way to the elevated drumset, just as she had the night before last. She glanced at her sister. Buffy seemed pretty good so far, despite the 'I Heart Devon' posters dotting the front of the crowd. No shaky limbs or sudden horizontality yet.

Buffy looked over her shoulder and nodded at her. Her face was grim.

Dawn glanced around to make sure everyone had reached their posts, then took a breath and whacked the rim before her.

Rat.
Rat.
Rat rat rat.

Xander heard the countoff, and readied his hands over the boards. There was a confused second when his first keypresses seemed to make a far louder noise than he'd anticipated. He stared at them incredulously, then he realized it was coming from the front of the stage.

Buffy had wrenched the microphone from it's stand and was bent double screaming into it.

"WHEN YOU SUFFER YOUR LAST DEFEAT/RINSEOUT YOUR BLOODY WOUNDS AND REPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAT!" Her head flew back on the last syllable.

He glanced at Oz, and their eyes met.

Holy shit.

Recognising the song, the audience cheered. Spike did his little dunkadungdung,dunkadungdung thing, and Buffy's head nodded along with it.

The beat steadied, and Oz came in. Xander fought his shock to keep his part in sync. This was a bit different from the Buffy of rehearsals. But better than Friday's version. He switched to the 'bongo board.'

Buffy straightened up, the dramatic entrance taken care of, and glared at the indistinct audience. Wolves.

"Stamp a barcode on your brow," she hissed through the noise of the band, teeth clenched and legs spread in a lunge. "Look. who's. Laughing now. It's so much easier being an automaton."

Dawn launched into a cacophonous spotlight.

Oz raised an eyebrow as Buffy threw her arms above her head and jerked seizure-like to her sister's rain of drumbeats. He glanced at Spike behind her back, but the blonde's eyes didn't leave the spasming vocalist. Oz hoped he was paying attention to the music. He had a spot coming up.

*

Her head snapped back to the jumping audience.

"Don't think."

Dungdung from the bassist.

"Just follow the swirling baton!"

Spike stepped forward for the guitar focus, fingers running madly across the strings, and Buffy threw herself crazily around the stage in some primal, spasmodic version of a dance. Spike kept his eyes on her the whole time, though it was hard to tell if his expression was awe, or fear that her wild movements would break something else.

She turned to face him, and advanced across the stage, feet falling in time with Dawn's steady pulse. Her head bobbed to Spike's part, just as his own was doing. Spike watched her come.

She seemed to be getting closer faster than she should with her stomping steps, and he realized he was walking towards her at the same rate she was moving towards him. To the audience, they must have been mirror images.

Staring at her face, he ground in a finger to sustain the last note of the solo. He smirked at her, and Buffy's lip quirked in response. As that note sliced the air around them, she spun around and shoved the microphone back into its stand and threw her arms out for the next line, gyrating around the mic. Spike joined the rest of the band as they came back in at full volume.

"I'm branded.
I'm stranded.
In a world that only wants
My number.
Just scan it.
Into the computer and read my soul..."

The last word trailed out with puckered lips centimeters from the mic, hands cupping it lovingly. There were a few seconds of silence. No one from the band except Spike was at an angle to see the wicked smirk she shot at the audience before she suddenly kicked the mic stand away from her, and leaned offstage with the handheld liberated once again.

"Someone teach me how to fish--" suddenly she was on the far right of the stage, leaning into the screaming audience waving their hands in the 'you rock' position.

"So I can fend for myself in this--" She danced away, sweat-soaked skin glittering in the harsh lights, and slid on her knees to stage left. On two knees and an arm, she whispered, "--pre-apocalyptic shell..."

She rolled away to the right, jumped up and returned to chorus with a triumphant footstomp. The eyes of her four bandmates followed her manic movements. Every now and then, they would glance at each other, sending Are you seeing what I'm seeing? I'm not on acid? looks.

Dawn just grinned as she drummed. This was more like the stage-Buffy she knew. Although... There was a little bit of an edge there that she hadn't noticed before. Slightly off. But it's working, whatever it is. No fainting spells tonight, no crying sulks tomorrow. Sounds like a plan to me. She caught herself drifting, and quickly focused on the task at hand. She shifted her sticks to the cymbal as the rest of the band grew quieter and Spike settled into his pingpings.

Buffy had the mic held horizontal to her mouth, and was swaying back and forth like one possessed by the beat. Most of the front row was mimicking the motion. The words seemed to escape her mouth with no force behind them other than automatic exhalations.

"I'm branded." --dadalang-- "And I'm stranded," a longer riff from the guitarist barely managing to cover his shock. Buffy's movements gained intensity as the rest of the band came back in at full volume.

"IN A WORLD THAT ONLY WANTS MY NUMBER!" She fell to her knees by the edge of the stage, and the enthused crowd reached for her as she threw her free arm out towards them.--

Yancy and Rob looked at each other.

"...She's no Devon," Yancy said slowly, fighting the urge to mosh...--

Holy fucking shit. It was all Spike could do to keep his fingers moving in the right places as he watched the blonde careen around the stage. He probably wouldn't have been able to manage it, except he was afraid if he stopped, so would she. For once, he wasn't hyper-aware of the audience. They weren't even in his head. It was all about her, and how amazingly ...spastic she was being.

Hands on the strings, hands on the strings, he repeated to himself, watching her rolling her hips around the mic stand. As long as you keep playing, everything's gonna be okay... Oh, wait. It's over. Oh shit what's the next song, what's the next song?

The arena erupted into far more applause than they had relinquished earlier. Buffy flicked them off, and shadowed hands raised in answer. The number of 'I Heart Devon' signs had dropped significantly.

With the briefest of pauses, the drums started again, and the next song screamed ahead, the distracted guitarist pausing just long enough to recognise Xander's opening chords before plunging in as well.


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I hope that Didz will now call off her flying monkeys.
Should they invade my airspace again, there will be potato guns and hurting.

~starmouse