Addendum to the Disclaimer: The song is "One Day More" from Les Miserables. I might be stretching characterization a bit to get both Xander and Dawn to know the lyrics, but hey, I went through a Les Mis phase, and I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that Dawn and Mrs. Harris did too.
Roads Less Traveled
by Casix Thistlebane
Story 5: Gator-Slayers
Part Two
"How's this?" Andrew leaned back in his chair at the classic round hotel table, gesturing toward the laptop's screen. Xander looked up from his book, then moved to lean over Andrew's shoulder.
The Illustrator document was headed off with a modified version of the "Slayer Mobile" logo Andrew had tried to put on Xander's car. Instead of the S.M. initials, an H and I intertwined over the sleeker looking cross and stake. Xander nodded, and Andrew scrolled down to the large, cheerful ComicSans lettering of the flier itself.
"Sudden bursts of strength? Learning to be afraid of the dark? We know why.
"If you're wondering what you're supposed to be doing with your life, if you want to make the world a better place, we can help. We know what you are and what you're capable of."
Xander frowned. "Points on truthfulness, but I think for once we actually want to be a little bit more cryptic than that." He shrugged. "It's a good start."
Andrew nodded, more serious than Xander had seen him in a long time. He was already highlighting the text, making thoughtful noises as he began typing in more letters. Xander patted him on the back before turning back to the rest of the group in the hotel room. "I like the logo though."
"It's the official seal now." Andrew grinned. "Sure you don't want the Slayer-Mobile decal?"
"Yes. A thousand times, yes." Xander scanned the room. Joanna sat hunched over a spiral notebook on one of the beds, trying to work out exactly what story she was going to tell the gathered slayers. Willow flipped through a book of spells, shaking her head, occasionally glancing up at Kennedy and Buffy, who were sparing in the small space between the end of the bed and the walls. "How's the rest of the preparation going?"
Kennedy wiped sweat from her forehead, then launched a kick at Buffy's head, which the elder slayer easily dodged. "Great." She glared at Buffy. "You're going to have to let me get SOME shots in,"
"You're gonna have to be able to hit me, then." Buffy smiled. "We've got to show these girls EXACTLY what they're all capable of. That means you've got to stop telegraphing your moves."
Kennedy growled, kicking her opponent sharply in the shin. Buffy winced.
"A little middle-school playground-ish, but . . . yeah, like that."
Xander smiled. Having watched Buffy fight for seven years, he knew that middle-school playground was probably exactly what was needed to get through her defenses. The eldest slayer was simply too used to trained opponents and body shots. Kennedy threw a punch at her face, and the fight started up again.
In reality, the two slayers probably didn't need to practice the sparring demonstration, but he suspected that both still had their issues with each other, and welcomed the chance to cause a little bit of pain. He moved over to where Willow sat with her book.
"And on the magical demo end of things?"
Willow looked up. She had a haunted look on her face. "I don't know, Xander." She gestured to the book. "I mean, yeah, these spells are all really . . . REALLY basic, barely more than pencil floating, but . . . this seems a bit like 'unnecessary magic' to me. I don't know if I'm okay with this."
Xander put his arm over her shoulders. "I know, Willow. But we've got to offer proof to these girls, that what we're talking about is real. We're going to try and convince them to leave everything they've ever known and loved to come and train with us, and to do that, we either need a life threatening hoard of vampires, or a beautiful witch with more than just basic parlor tricks."
"Stop hitting on my girlfriend!" Kennedy barely dodged a spin kick from Buffy, and Xander blew a raspberry at her. Willow turned back to her book, blushing slightly. It had been years since she'd crushed on Xander, but every now and then he caught her off-guard, and muscle memory turned her briefly back into the shy tenth grade computer geek who knew his blood pressure.
"And how 'bout you, Jo?" Xander shifted to look at the young recruit.
"Don't call me Jo." It came out as a off-handed mutter as Joanna ripped a whole page out of her notebook, crumpled it, and threw it towards the trash can. It missed, landing on top of a growing pile of similar pages. "I'm not a writer, dammit!"
Xander sighed. "You don't have to be. Look," he stood, and placed a hand over her notebook, nearly getting it stabbed with her ballpoint pen. "Don't plan it out. Just talk from the heart. Giles can be prepared-speech-guy. You're out to be just like them."
"Easy for you to say, you and Dawn are the experienced parties. Is it too late for me to go back to Cleveland?"
"One word:" Buffy blocked a punch and used Kennedy's momentum to slam her toward the wall. "Wood's 'I'm the son of a slayer, I know better than you' speech."
Joanna grimaced. "That's a lot more than one word."
Xander grinned, then glanced around the room again. "Where is Dawn, anyway?"
Joanna shrugged, doodling on her notebook. "She's in my room. She wanted to unwind with my cd player for awhile. I think she needed some non-Xander time."
Joanna had lugged her mid-nineties boom-box down from Cleveland with her, much to the dismay of those who were packing the school van. Xander couldn't help but be a little thankful for that, he knew that he and Dawn were starting to get a little cabin-feverish from being in such close quarters with each other for the last few weeks. But he also knew that Buffy being back had turned Dawn back into Little Sister mode, rather than the rather grown up young woman she had become on their road trip.
"I'll go check in on her." Xander stood. "Let her know it's almost time to go trolling for slayers." At Joanna's exasperated look, he continued. "I promise not to cut in on her 'non-Xander' time too much, but we need to get rolling on this if we're going to get those fliers out before our midnight slayer conference."
Joanna looked at the clock and squeaked. She began writing furiously again, and Xander shrugged. He knew she'd do well, he just wondered how to convince HER of that fact. But he wasn't lying, Andrew was getting started on the printing and they only had a few more hours left before they had to get to the auditorium that Giles had somehow managed to rent at the last minute. He slipped out the door, narrowly avoiding another tossed piece of paper, and turned down the hall toward the room Joanna shared with Dawn.
The muffled bass notes coming through the door reassured him that Dawn was not, in fact, practicing stripper-esque dance moves, so Xander decided to forgo knocking in favor of simply slipping in. Dawn was standing between the two queen sized beds, a hairbrush in her hands, her eyes shut tight as she sang along with the cd player. He recognized the music from his mother's brief Broadway phase when he was in elementary school, and he could help smiling as he watched Dawn affect an agonized grimace and raise her left arm in a yearning gesture.
"One day more!
Another day, another destiny,
this never ending road to Calvary!
These men who seem to know my crime
will surely come a second time!
One day more!"
She swung both arms to her chest, clutching her hands over her heart, and pursed her lips at an imaginary partner.
"I did not live until today!
How can I live when we are parted?"
She slammed back into agonized to put in another "One day more" before returning to love struck.
"Tomorrow you'll be worlds away,
and yet with you my world has started!"
Xander grinned. This had been one of his mother's favorites, too, and he'd helped her perform the higher parts before he had decided it wasn't manly enough, and his mother had started drinking. He stepped up behind Dawn, and took on Eponine in a throaty falsetto.
"One more day all on my own," he managed to croon, before Dawn spun and slammed into him in shock.
"Don't DO that!" She punctuated her protest with a blow to his chest, and he feigned hurt.
"I know, my voice is terrible, but this song really requires more than just a solo artist."
Dawn growled with false menace, and he held up his hands.
"Sorry! Didn't mean to startle you, but we're about to get moving." He leaned over and hit the pause button on the stereo. "May I ask what brought on this Les Mis fest?"
"Jane and Mike were doing Val Jean and Javier at the cast party. You know, after they were . . . doing . . . each other." She blushed. "Do you think I could be an actress?"
"I think you could be whatever you want, Dawnie."
"I'm not kidding! After we get the Institute set up, I want to go to college. And theater looked like so much fun."
"I'm not kidding either." Xander sat back on the bed. "You know you don't have to stay with the Institute. You've still got a whole life ahead of you to plan, and us old farts are not going to hold you back. With no PTB given destiny, you can literally go anywhere and do anything you want." He patted the bed beside him. "Honestly? I think you're damned lucky that way."
Dawn sat, and punched his arm. "I'm not the only one, you know. You could go back into construction, now that you've got that eye."
Xander shook his head. "I love doing construction work, but I think I made my choice a long time ago. It's too late for me to back out now." He shrugged. "Besides, that group needs the comic relief, an ordinary guy to remind them that life isn't all demons and ooglies." He stood. "But for now, I know you wanted your 'me' time, so I'll stop interrupting your rehearsal. Meet us out front in . . ." he glanced at his watch. "Half an hour?"
"Yeah." Dawn restarted the cd, and the Thenardiares sung out their dubious intentions. Xander smiled and headed for the door. Dawn did have a great, if untrained, singing voice. As he went back to the presentation preparations, he couldn't shake the image of her, center stage, belting into the spotlight from his head.
He was going to do everything he could to make sure that image would happen.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Xander checked his watch, then his printed list, then the large pile of fliers on the chair next to him. It was time. He slipped into the science auditorium and softly closed the doors behind him.
He was absolutely exhausted. They all were. They'd spent most of the afternoon in the Gator Lake Club, identifying slayers, handing out fliers, and convincing the girls that they NEEDED to attend. He was pretty sure they'd still managed to miss a few, but nearly every girl they'd cornered was now seated in the auditorium, fidgeting, looking nervous or bored, or, in the case of a set of five girls in the back, very excited. He'd had to turn away quite a few boyfriends at the door, apparently the statement that only those girls given the flier could attend had come off as suspicious, a fact which didn't surprise him in the least.
He'd been given door duty due to the simple fact that he was the one who could recognize if the attendees were in fact slayers. While the world was slowly accepting the idea of vampires and magic, he knew that there were simply too many skeptics out there to come completely out in the open. They wanted to make sure their audience was ONLY the ones who really mattered, the ones who had the stuff.
Xander had let in a few extra girls, though. Mostly because their slayer friends wouldn't attend without them. He understood that kind of loyalty, that kind of friendship. And he firmly believed, though the Institute didn't have the money for it yet, that someday they should open a slayerette training facility as well. Maybe he could sneak some of these slayerettes in training into the school now. It would certainly soften the blow of sudden responsibility.
He looked up at the stage, where Joanna was positioning herself behind the podium. Her story was the introduction, the first whammy to catch the girls' attention. Then Giles would do his "to every generation" speech, followed by the fight demonstration by Kennedy and Buffy, and then the magic show from Willow. They'd finish up with a Q&A session with the whole gang, but until then, Xander was just planning to watch. Part of him wanted to be up there on stage with his friends, but a larger part was just kind of happy that for once it wasn't him who had to do the explaining.
Joanna was pale, looking a bit like she'd like to run away or throw up on the spot. She was fingering a sheath of paper nervously, casting glances out over the murmuring audience. He caught her eye, and gave her a thumbs up.
She smiled, shakily, then glanced back down at her paper. Then, to Xander's surprise, she shrugged. She dropped the paper onto the podium with a satisfied smirk, then pushed the whole thing aside and strode purposefully to the edge of the small stage. The murmuring rose in volume as she sat down, cross-legged, and once more scanned her audience.
"Hi." Her voice carried to the last rows of the room without the aid of the microphone attached to the podium, and she seemed slightly startled by the sound of it. Xander nodded approvingly at her again, surprised himself at the room's acoustics. He supposed there must be hidden sound panels in the ceiling and walls. Joanna sat up straighter.
"My name is Joanna Christenson. I'm seventeen years old, and I'm a student at the Helsing Institute in Cleveland. There will be time for speeches and questions later, but right now, I'm here to tell you all a story."
The girls in the audience shifted slightly. Several of the bored students looked up, intrigued, while others started whispering to their friends. Joanna ignored all of that, and stood. Her expression was becoming more and more settled as she continued, and Xander couldn't help but grin. This was exactly what he was hoping Joanna could do.
"It starts last year, in May, in the city of Bethesda, just outside of DC. It's a strange story, but I think you might just find it familiar. It's about a girl, just like all of you, though perhaps a bit younger, a bit more naive. She was waiting for her bus after school, when two of her fellow classmates began to fight."
Xander leaned back against the door as Joanna began to pace the stage. He had wondered what she had been doing when she was called. He wondered that about all of the slayers, those he'd met and those they still didn't know about. He hoped, eventually, to hear all of those stories, but he doubted any would be told quite as well as this one. Where had Joanna learned to hold an audience's attention like that?
She marked on the stage where the two boys had been fighting, moving slowly through their gestures, and their moves, her body language changing subtly from character to character. She explained how the boys' battle had moved through the waiting teens, who backed up, forming a circle, and chanting. How even the few teachers and administrators that had been standing nearby looked as though they weren't willing to step in.
How, just as the boys reached her position, she had felt the swelling of power within herself, and known without really knowing that she was to be the one to break it up.
Her voice held a level of amusement that could only have come from a good distance from the event itself as she explained how she, untrained, had ended up getting her butt kicked before taking the two boys down. And how the teachers had finally stepped in, when she'd knocked a boy twice her size to the pavement, and suspended her for a week while tending to the boys' bruises.
The story didn't end there. Joanna told the group of strangers how her grandmother and grandfather had taken the news that their girl had been in a fight, and how she had accidentally injured one of her few friends weeks later in a good natured wrestling match over, of all things, a sock. How her new strength had alienated her from her teachers and peers, how she became known in the principal's office, and how she'd spent six months in confusion, and occasional despair, over her powers before she was "rescued" (and Xander had to blink at that one, it wasn't how he had seen it at all) by two strangers who came and offered her a chance to use her abilities for the good of the world. She did not tell them about the Cabin John beast or the battle in the woods.
"That day in May?" She concluded, seating herself once more on the stage. "I don't remember the date, but perhaps some of you do. It was the day that an 'earthquake' completely leveled a small town in California. It was nearly the same time that nature seemed to turn on Los Angeles, bringing fear of terrorists and Armageddon to the country. And it's the day that my life, and yours, changed forever. It's the day that we were all called, by a young witch and a small army of the bravest people you will ever meet, to become the protectors of the world. It's the day we became slayers."
Joanna smiled up at Xander then, who could only nod slowly at her. She'd done better than he'd hoped, though her finale had brought the silently listening audience back to a dull roar of questions and scoffing comments. She stood again, as Giles stepped out of the audience to the stage.
"What's a slayer? That's for this guy to tell you. Listen carefully to everything you hear tonight, and keep a VERY open mind. You might not believe it, but hopefully by the end of the evening, you'll have a better idea of the world, the Helsing Institute, and most importantly, of what you and I are. I sincerely hope that you all will become my classmates soon." She blushed, and glanced down. "Um, thank you."
The audience watched quietly as Joanna left the stage and Giles retrieved the podium and cleared his throat. Xander ducked quietly back through the door. He didn't really feel like listening to Giles' lecture for the umpteenth time, and he knew that this was probably his last chance at a quiet moment before he and Dawn would head out to continue their slayer search. These girls were going to have a LOT of questions, and he was one of only a handful of people who could answer them.
end part two
Roads Less Traveled
by Casix Thistlebane
Story 5: Gator-Slayers
Part Two
"How's this?" Andrew leaned back in his chair at the classic round hotel table, gesturing toward the laptop's screen. Xander looked up from his book, then moved to lean over Andrew's shoulder.
The Illustrator document was headed off with a modified version of the "Slayer Mobile" logo Andrew had tried to put on Xander's car. Instead of the S.M. initials, an H and I intertwined over the sleeker looking cross and stake. Xander nodded, and Andrew scrolled down to the large, cheerful ComicSans lettering of the flier itself.
"Sudden bursts of strength? Learning to be afraid of the dark? We know why.
"If you're wondering what you're supposed to be doing with your life, if you want to make the world a better place, we can help. We know what you are and what you're capable of."
Xander frowned. "Points on truthfulness, but I think for once we actually want to be a little bit more cryptic than that." He shrugged. "It's a good start."
Andrew nodded, more serious than Xander had seen him in a long time. He was already highlighting the text, making thoughtful noises as he began typing in more letters. Xander patted him on the back before turning back to the rest of the group in the hotel room. "I like the logo though."
"It's the official seal now." Andrew grinned. "Sure you don't want the Slayer-Mobile decal?"
"Yes. A thousand times, yes." Xander scanned the room. Joanna sat hunched over a spiral notebook on one of the beds, trying to work out exactly what story she was going to tell the gathered slayers. Willow flipped through a book of spells, shaking her head, occasionally glancing up at Kennedy and Buffy, who were sparing in the small space between the end of the bed and the walls. "How's the rest of the preparation going?"
Kennedy wiped sweat from her forehead, then launched a kick at Buffy's head, which the elder slayer easily dodged. "Great." She glared at Buffy. "You're going to have to let me get SOME shots in,"
"You're gonna have to be able to hit me, then." Buffy smiled. "We've got to show these girls EXACTLY what they're all capable of. That means you've got to stop telegraphing your moves."
Kennedy growled, kicking her opponent sharply in the shin. Buffy winced.
"A little middle-school playground-ish, but . . . yeah, like that."
Xander smiled. Having watched Buffy fight for seven years, he knew that middle-school playground was probably exactly what was needed to get through her defenses. The eldest slayer was simply too used to trained opponents and body shots. Kennedy threw a punch at her face, and the fight started up again.
In reality, the two slayers probably didn't need to practice the sparring demonstration, but he suspected that both still had their issues with each other, and welcomed the chance to cause a little bit of pain. He moved over to where Willow sat with her book.
"And on the magical demo end of things?"
Willow looked up. She had a haunted look on her face. "I don't know, Xander." She gestured to the book. "I mean, yeah, these spells are all really . . . REALLY basic, barely more than pencil floating, but . . . this seems a bit like 'unnecessary magic' to me. I don't know if I'm okay with this."
Xander put his arm over her shoulders. "I know, Willow. But we've got to offer proof to these girls, that what we're talking about is real. We're going to try and convince them to leave everything they've ever known and loved to come and train with us, and to do that, we either need a life threatening hoard of vampires, or a beautiful witch with more than just basic parlor tricks."
"Stop hitting on my girlfriend!" Kennedy barely dodged a spin kick from Buffy, and Xander blew a raspberry at her. Willow turned back to her book, blushing slightly. It had been years since she'd crushed on Xander, but every now and then he caught her off-guard, and muscle memory turned her briefly back into the shy tenth grade computer geek who knew his blood pressure.
"And how 'bout you, Jo?" Xander shifted to look at the young recruit.
"Don't call me Jo." It came out as a off-handed mutter as Joanna ripped a whole page out of her notebook, crumpled it, and threw it towards the trash can. It missed, landing on top of a growing pile of similar pages. "I'm not a writer, dammit!"
Xander sighed. "You don't have to be. Look," he stood, and placed a hand over her notebook, nearly getting it stabbed with her ballpoint pen. "Don't plan it out. Just talk from the heart. Giles can be prepared-speech-guy. You're out to be just like them."
"Easy for you to say, you and Dawn are the experienced parties. Is it too late for me to go back to Cleveland?"
"One word:" Buffy blocked a punch and used Kennedy's momentum to slam her toward the wall. "Wood's 'I'm the son of a slayer, I know better than you' speech."
Joanna grimaced. "That's a lot more than one word."
Xander grinned, then glanced around the room again. "Where is Dawn, anyway?"
Joanna shrugged, doodling on her notebook. "She's in my room. She wanted to unwind with my cd player for awhile. I think she needed some non-Xander time."
Joanna had lugged her mid-nineties boom-box down from Cleveland with her, much to the dismay of those who were packing the school van. Xander couldn't help but be a little thankful for that, he knew that he and Dawn were starting to get a little cabin-feverish from being in such close quarters with each other for the last few weeks. But he also knew that Buffy being back had turned Dawn back into Little Sister mode, rather than the rather grown up young woman she had become on their road trip.
"I'll go check in on her." Xander stood. "Let her know it's almost time to go trolling for slayers." At Joanna's exasperated look, he continued. "I promise not to cut in on her 'non-Xander' time too much, but we need to get rolling on this if we're going to get those fliers out before our midnight slayer conference."
Joanna looked at the clock and squeaked. She began writing furiously again, and Xander shrugged. He knew she'd do well, he just wondered how to convince HER of that fact. But he wasn't lying, Andrew was getting started on the printing and they only had a few more hours left before they had to get to the auditorium that Giles had somehow managed to rent at the last minute. He slipped out the door, narrowly avoiding another tossed piece of paper, and turned down the hall toward the room Joanna shared with Dawn.
The muffled bass notes coming through the door reassured him that Dawn was not, in fact, practicing stripper-esque dance moves, so Xander decided to forgo knocking in favor of simply slipping in. Dawn was standing between the two queen sized beds, a hairbrush in her hands, her eyes shut tight as she sang along with the cd player. He recognized the music from his mother's brief Broadway phase when he was in elementary school, and he could help smiling as he watched Dawn affect an agonized grimace and raise her left arm in a yearning gesture.
"One day more!
Another day, another destiny,
this never ending road to Calvary!
These men who seem to know my crime
will surely come a second time!
One day more!"
She swung both arms to her chest, clutching her hands over her heart, and pursed her lips at an imaginary partner.
"I did not live until today!
How can I live when we are parted?"
She slammed back into agonized to put in another "One day more" before returning to love struck.
"Tomorrow you'll be worlds away,
and yet with you my world has started!"
Xander grinned. This had been one of his mother's favorites, too, and he'd helped her perform the higher parts before he had decided it wasn't manly enough, and his mother had started drinking. He stepped up behind Dawn, and took on Eponine in a throaty falsetto.
"One more day all on my own," he managed to croon, before Dawn spun and slammed into him in shock.
"Don't DO that!" She punctuated her protest with a blow to his chest, and he feigned hurt.
"I know, my voice is terrible, but this song really requires more than just a solo artist."
Dawn growled with false menace, and he held up his hands.
"Sorry! Didn't mean to startle you, but we're about to get moving." He leaned over and hit the pause button on the stereo. "May I ask what brought on this Les Mis fest?"
"Jane and Mike were doing Val Jean and Javier at the cast party. You know, after they were . . . doing . . . each other." She blushed. "Do you think I could be an actress?"
"I think you could be whatever you want, Dawnie."
"I'm not kidding! After we get the Institute set up, I want to go to college. And theater looked like so much fun."
"I'm not kidding either." Xander sat back on the bed. "You know you don't have to stay with the Institute. You've still got a whole life ahead of you to plan, and us old farts are not going to hold you back. With no PTB given destiny, you can literally go anywhere and do anything you want." He patted the bed beside him. "Honestly? I think you're damned lucky that way."
Dawn sat, and punched his arm. "I'm not the only one, you know. You could go back into construction, now that you've got that eye."
Xander shook his head. "I love doing construction work, but I think I made my choice a long time ago. It's too late for me to back out now." He shrugged. "Besides, that group needs the comic relief, an ordinary guy to remind them that life isn't all demons and ooglies." He stood. "But for now, I know you wanted your 'me' time, so I'll stop interrupting your rehearsal. Meet us out front in . . ." he glanced at his watch. "Half an hour?"
"Yeah." Dawn restarted the cd, and the Thenardiares sung out their dubious intentions. Xander smiled and headed for the door. Dawn did have a great, if untrained, singing voice. As he went back to the presentation preparations, he couldn't shake the image of her, center stage, belting into the spotlight from his head.
He was going to do everything he could to make sure that image would happen.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Xander checked his watch, then his printed list, then the large pile of fliers on the chair next to him. It was time. He slipped into the science auditorium and softly closed the doors behind him.
He was absolutely exhausted. They all were. They'd spent most of the afternoon in the Gator Lake Club, identifying slayers, handing out fliers, and convincing the girls that they NEEDED to attend. He was pretty sure they'd still managed to miss a few, but nearly every girl they'd cornered was now seated in the auditorium, fidgeting, looking nervous or bored, or, in the case of a set of five girls in the back, very excited. He'd had to turn away quite a few boyfriends at the door, apparently the statement that only those girls given the flier could attend had come off as suspicious, a fact which didn't surprise him in the least.
He'd been given door duty due to the simple fact that he was the one who could recognize if the attendees were in fact slayers. While the world was slowly accepting the idea of vampires and magic, he knew that there were simply too many skeptics out there to come completely out in the open. They wanted to make sure their audience was ONLY the ones who really mattered, the ones who had the stuff.
Xander had let in a few extra girls, though. Mostly because their slayer friends wouldn't attend without them. He understood that kind of loyalty, that kind of friendship. And he firmly believed, though the Institute didn't have the money for it yet, that someday they should open a slayerette training facility as well. Maybe he could sneak some of these slayerettes in training into the school now. It would certainly soften the blow of sudden responsibility.
He looked up at the stage, where Joanna was positioning herself behind the podium. Her story was the introduction, the first whammy to catch the girls' attention. Then Giles would do his "to every generation" speech, followed by the fight demonstration by Kennedy and Buffy, and then the magic show from Willow. They'd finish up with a Q&A session with the whole gang, but until then, Xander was just planning to watch. Part of him wanted to be up there on stage with his friends, but a larger part was just kind of happy that for once it wasn't him who had to do the explaining.
Joanna was pale, looking a bit like she'd like to run away or throw up on the spot. She was fingering a sheath of paper nervously, casting glances out over the murmuring audience. He caught her eye, and gave her a thumbs up.
She smiled, shakily, then glanced back down at her paper. Then, to Xander's surprise, she shrugged. She dropped the paper onto the podium with a satisfied smirk, then pushed the whole thing aside and strode purposefully to the edge of the small stage. The murmuring rose in volume as she sat down, cross-legged, and once more scanned her audience.
"Hi." Her voice carried to the last rows of the room without the aid of the microphone attached to the podium, and she seemed slightly startled by the sound of it. Xander nodded approvingly at her again, surprised himself at the room's acoustics. He supposed there must be hidden sound panels in the ceiling and walls. Joanna sat up straighter.
"My name is Joanna Christenson. I'm seventeen years old, and I'm a student at the Helsing Institute in Cleveland. There will be time for speeches and questions later, but right now, I'm here to tell you all a story."
The girls in the audience shifted slightly. Several of the bored students looked up, intrigued, while others started whispering to their friends. Joanna ignored all of that, and stood. Her expression was becoming more and more settled as she continued, and Xander couldn't help but grin. This was exactly what he was hoping Joanna could do.
"It starts last year, in May, in the city of Bethesda, just outside of DC. It's a strange story, but I think you might just find it familiar. It's about a girl, just like all of you, though perhaps a bit younger, a bit more naive. She was waiting for her bus after school, when two of her fellow classmates began to fight."
Xander leaned back against the door as Joanna began to pace the stage. He had wondered what she had been doing when she was called. He wondered that about all of the slayers, those he'd met and those they still didn't know about. He hoped, eventually, to hear all of those stories, but he doubted any would be told quite as well as this one. Where had Joanna learned to hold an audience's attention like that?
She marked on the stage where the two boys had been fighting, moving slowly through their gestures, and their moves, her body language changing subtly from character to character. She explained how the boys' battle had moved through the waiting teens, who backed up, forming a circle, and chanting. How even the few teachers and administrators that had been standing nearby looked as though they weren't willing to step in.
How, just as the boys reached her position, she had felt the swelling of power within herself, and known without really knowing that she was to be the one to break it up.
Her voice held a level of amusement that could only have come from a good distance from the event itself as she explained how she, untrained, had ended up getting her butt kicked before taking the two boys down. And how the teachers had finally stepped in, when she'd knocked a boy twice her size to the pavement, and suspended her for a week while tending to the boys' bruises.
The story didn't end there. Joanna told the group of strangers how her grandmother and grandfather had taken the news that their girl had been in a fight, and how she had accidentally injured one of her few friends weeks later in a good natured wrestling match over, of all things, a sock. How her new strength had alienated her from her teachers and peers, how she became known in the principal's office, and how she'd spent six months in confusion, and occasional despair, over her powers before she was "rescued" (and Xander had to blink at that one, it wasn't how he had seen it at all) by two strangers who came and offered her a chance to use her abilities for the good of the world. She did not tell them about the Cabin John beast or the battle in the woods.
"That day in May?" She concluded, seating herself once more on the stage. "I don't remember the date, but perhaps some of you do. It was the day that an 'earthquake' completely leveled a small town in California. It was nearly the same time that nature seemed to turn on Los Angeles, bringing fear of terrorists and Armageddon to the country. And it's the day that my life, and yours, changed forever. It's the day that we were all called, by a young witch and a small army of the bravest people you will ever meet, to become the protectors of the world. It's the day we became slayers."
Joanna smiled up at Xander then, who could only nod slowly at her. She'd done better than he'd hoped, though her finale had brought the silently listening audience back to a dull roar of questions and scoffing comments. She stood again, as Giles stepped out of the audience to the stage.
"What's a slayer? That's for this guy to tell you. Listen carefully to everything you hear tonight, and keep a VERY open mind. You might not believe it, but hopefully by the end of the evening, you'll have a better idea of the world, the Helsing Institute, and most importantly, of what you and I are. I sincerely hope that you all will become my classmates soon." She blushed, and glanced down. "Um, thank you."
The audience watched quietly as Joanna left the stage and Giles retrieved the podium and cleared his throat. Xander ducked quietly back through the door. He didn't really feel like listening to Giles' lecture for the umpteenth time, and he knew that this was probably his last chance at a quiet moment before he and Dawn would head out to continue their slayer search. These girls were going to have a LOT of questions, and he was one of only a handful of people who could answer them.
end part two