Part 6: Out-Scoobying the Scoobies
This, Faith decided, was shaping up to the weirdest night of her life.
It started normal enough: two vampire stakings; a patrol-like stroll around town with Vi and Rona; a random incident involving a mischievous gremlin; and back to the compound for a late dinner with Robin. Things started falling apart when she trundled up to the main entrance and found a muttering, furious Robin on the stoop complaining about Xander's attitude.
Any last hope of normalcy got blown of the water by the sound and light show.
Which brings her to the here and now.
The Cleveland crew¾ which numbered almost two dozen people¾ was stationed around the perimeter of the library. Half appeared amused, half appeared worried, all of them had no idea what to make of the visitors clumped together in the middle of the future home of the library and resource center.
"Everyone is here," Giles announced. "Andrew? Do settle down."
"Can't help it. This is soooo exciting," Andrew enthused as he fiddled with his ever-present camcorder.
"I really don't feel comfortable…" the woman began.
"Tough," Buffy stated as she crossed her arms.
Faith could swear she heard the kid next to the speaking woman snarl. Probably not her imagination since she saw Buffy's eyes widen as the brunette female placed a calming hand on the girl's shoulder. The older female bent down and whispered in the girl's ear in a tone that was too low-pitched for Faith to hear. The kid slumped her shoulders and nodded.
The woman straightened and tilted her head in a show of respect. "My apologies Summers-rah. Ruda can be very protective. She promises to be civil from now on since no one is here to pick a fight."
"Ummm, just Summers, not Summersra," Buffy stuttered.
"-Rah is a title," said the man bearing a thing metal thing that flashed a profusion of lights.
"Charlie," the woman warned.
"Ra," Willow muttered. Her eyes opened wide. "Do you mean –rah?"
"That's what he said," the Ruda kid said with a puzzled frown.
"Guys, we really can't get sidetracked into…" the woman began.
"Watership Down!" Willow interrupted with a shout.
"Water-wha? Wha?" said a second woman wearing a red pants-suit number that might be considered sleekly chic among the Paris crowd, provided the Paris crowd was now basing its designs on patterns created by designers living on Uranus.
"Too late," the brunette woman sighed.
"Watership Down. It's a book," Willow quickly explained. She turned to Xander. "You remember, right? Ninth grade summer reading?"
Xander brow crinkled in thought. "Is that the one about those weird rabbits? The one Anya tried to kill when she saw the cover in a bookstore? I kinda remember that because I had to read the actual book since I couldn't find the Cliff Notes."
"What's a rabbits?" Ruda asked as she bounced over to Xander with excitement. "Oh, and what's a klif notes?"
"Is anyone listening to me?" the brunette woman asked, knowing she was heading into rhetorical question territory. "Or am I talking to myself? I know. I'm just flapping my gums at the air. Don't anyone pay me any mind. I'll just prop myself up in the corner over there and you can call me when you find a lexicon."
"Oh, sorry, I had a wa-wa moment," Willow explained.
"Don't anyone dare ask," the woman warned her crew. "Next one who interrupts will need Charlie to fix their broken jaw."
"Better behave guys, I think she's getting annoyed and I don't feel like setting broken bones," metal thing-bearing man, who was apparently the Charlie in question, stage-whispered to his companions.
"Okay, in this book, -rah was a title, like you were saying," Willow was vibrating with excitement. "So, I think it might mean something like big chief, right?"
The woman tilted her head, as if puzzling out the redhead. "Umm, is that like 'one in charge'?"
"Yeah," the witch replied.
"Yes, then, yes. Close enough. Good guess," the woman nodded, hair flopping in her face. She shoved it out of her eyes in an irritated move.
"Hey, they called Xander something similar," Buffy said. "Rahsen, right?"
"Ruda did. Not me. I wouldn't…I'm not…look, we need to stop…I think I need to get introductions out of the way." The woman sounded terrified that she was going to find herself in yet another verbal maze.
Faith silently sympathized. More than once she felt like the Scoobs all spoke an alien language. Although the instances were getting less and less, she was still amazed how Xander, Buffy, Willow, Dawn, and even to a certain extent, Giles, would ping from one point to another without stepping on any logic lurking in between.
"We should stop interrupting the woman," Robin said.
The woman jerked her head sidewise, but didn't quite turn around to look at him. Faith could swear she saw the woman's mouth narrow slightly, as if she had tasted something bad, but the expression soon smoothed out into a professional mask.
"Go ahead," Robin urged, "we're all listening."
The woman hesitated a few moments as if she resented having to accept permission to explain herself.
The silence gave Faith the opportunity to really study her instead of focusing on what she was saying in that untraceable accent. She stood nearly six feet, almost as tall as Xander in fact. The Slayer noticed that she was dressed somewhat casually compared to the rest of the group, more a frontline fighter than a leader. While you couldn't rightfully call her get-up blue jeans, t-shirt, and a long, black canvas coat, it looked close enough to the equivalent that you could call her clothes by those names. A silver ornate pin that looked like a series of swirls and knots glittered as the edge of the unbuttoned coat moved.
To someone less observant than the dark-haired Slayer, she seemed calm and very much the person in control, an image supported by the fact that her heavily booted feet were in something resembling a defensive stance while the rest of her crew crowded behind her. The attitudes of the others made it pretty damn clear in Faith's mind that she was in charge, regardless of how she was dressed.
However, Faith noticed an air of nervousness and a barely suppressed physical jitter as the woman shoved her hands in the pockets of her voluminous black coat. The woman glanced around, trying to read the mood of the room based on the expressions on the faces surrounding her. At least twice she hesitated in her scan, as if loath to quite move on to the next face. The first time was when her gaze met the Buffy-Xander-Giles knot and the second time when her eyes landed on the Robin-Faith-Vi-Rona knot.
"Thank you," the woman said very carefully after her moment of silence in a cool, overly polite tone. "Before I let you know about the where and when we're from, let me get the introductions out of the way." She waved to a dishwater blond man wearing a grey uniform with the universal entwined serpents that announced he was a doctor. "This is our medic, Dr. Charlie Ravensgood, of Haphaestus Colony."
He smiled tightly and waved the thin metal thing in his hands. "Just Charlie," he said in an accent that wasn't entirely traceable either.
She pointed over to a brown-skinned, white-haired man wearing all black, complete with a black pouch hanging from his belt, and announced, "This is our witch, J'Nal ca-J'Veb of the Prima."
J'Nal gave a curt nod, winced as if even that much hurt, and returned to rubbing his temples as if he had a monster headache.
"You have a witch?" Willow piped up.
"We have a hurting witch," J'Nal answered in an accent that sounded very upper crust British. "Someone got an asper? My head feels like it's going to explode. Teach me to expel extra energy to impress the Ancients."
"Asper?" Xander asked. "Ancients?"
The woman's jerked around as she fixed Xander with an unreadable look.
"Sorry," Xander quickly amended. "No more stupid questions until you're done."
"But there are no stupid questions, right Catherine?" Ruda bounced on her feet like an overcharged rubber ball as she asked this. Like the leading lady, she was also dressed for fighting, complete with an ornate scabbard slung crosswise across her back, a sheath that strapped a very cool throwing knife to her right leg, a second sheath that strapped a throwing axe to her left leg, and some sort of arm contraption on her right forearm that seemed to be a spring-loaded mechanism that hid some other weapon in its recesses
Faith decided that the hyper kid looked like she could really hurt someone in a fight. Despite the girlish excitement, something in this Ruda's eyes announced that she was a Slayer.
The woman, who was apparently the Catherine in question, favored the girl was a relaxed smile. "Our perpetual motion engine here is our Slayer, Ruda Jawal of New Indra."
That introduction was enough to get a murmur out of everyone while Faith smiled. Hah! I was right, the kid is a Slayer, she thought with some satisfaction.
The kid bounced up to Faith's group and gave a perfect, graceful curtsey that stopped just short of genuflection. As Ruda straightened back up and Faith swore the kid looked directly in her eyes before saying, "It is an honor to meet you, Lanoire-rah-sen."
Faith's brow crinkled in confusion while she felt everyone swing their focus to her as opposed to keeping them on the very strange guests. The kid backed away, shy smile not dimming one jot, while her silver pin winked at the room as if attempting to share a secret joke.
"Rahsen," Faith muttered.
"Same thing Buffy said they called Xander," Robin whispered back. Faith looked up and saw that his jaw was clenched tight, as if preventing himself from saying anything more.
When Ruda returned to Catherine's side, the older woman pulled her close in a one-armed hug. Although Faith didn't see the woman so much as look at her younger charge, the way the Ruda leaned into the embrace showed the newest Slayer on the block trusted the dark-haired woman completely.
"The lady in red," here Catherine grinned and waved at a chic woman, "is Camlin Tikri, a witnesser for UNS."
"This is…words fail…I have no idea how I'm gonna write this lead," the woman stammered.
"Better call her Ms. Tikri," Catherine added. "She tends to get riled if you get overly familiar."
"Hada, you can call me anything you futching want, as long as you give me the whole story about the First Battle of Sun'dayl," the woman cheerfully contradicted.
Faith saw Xander look around the room while everyone's face reflected unified confusion. She watched him sigh.
"Okay, since no one else is willing to play dunce today, I'll ask," he said. "If you're talking about a sundial, why would there be a battle over it? I mean, it's not like you can't buy them in a garden supply shop. You gotta clear this up, because right now I'm thinking that landscapers are armed wherever you're from. And just for the record that picture is giving me the serious wiggins because I'm the guy who has to deal with the greedy bastards."
The visitors looked at each other in consternation.
"You mean there was no battle in Sun'dayl?" Ms. Tiki practically liked her chops as she asked the question. "You mean the crater was a natural formation and not the result of a mystical convergence collapsing in on itself?"
"Sundial probably means Sunnydale," Giles murmured.
"Sun-ee-dayil," Ms. Tikri did not have an easy time getting her tongue around the word.
"Ms. Tiki? Later," Catherine warned.
"And what's your name?" Xander asked.
"Mine?" Catherine nervously licked her lips.
"You went through the whole line-up but left you out. Do we call you Catherine, Cathy, Ms. Guisewite, what?" Xander asked.
Faith noticed the woman pause as if she were thinking over the answer. She could swear that she saw everyone else in Catherine's group hold their breath as they watched their leader out of the corner of their collective eyes.
Catherine scrubbed her free left hand through her hair as if thinking something over before finally answering, "I'm the Watcher Honoria, Catherine-rah, from New Providence Colony."
Faith saw the visitors cast questioning sidewise glances at each other while Catherine added in an almost dismissive tone, "Everyone just calls me Catherine. Our group isn't much on the official titles."
"Watcher Honoria?" Giles asked, as his eyes flitted back and forth between Catherine and Ruda. "I don't…"
"Ooooh, watch out. You're gonna get a broken jaw," Charlie snickered. "Sick 'em Catherine the Great."
"Look, I'm certain you have a lot of questions, a lot of questions, but we probably won't be able to answer all of them, in fact, we probably won't be able to answer any of them," Catherine said, fixing her medic with a frown. "Because this is where things get a little complicated."
"Like they're not complicated now," Xander grumbled. "Am I the only one catching about half of what they say?"
"You can follow half of it?" Buffy asked. "You're doing better than me."
"That's what you get for lending Xander the Scooby brain cell," Kennedy chuckled. When Willow, Buffy, Xander, Dawn, and Giles turned to glare at her, she added, "Joking. Just joking. Sheesh. Stop taking it personally."
"That's not it," Xander said. "Usually Giles has ownership of the brain cell. If I had it, I'd probably just get it dirty."
"That's because you and Willow are in the room next to Xander's and mine," Andrew volunteered. When everyone looked at him, he protested, "Well it's true."
Xander leaned towards a horrified Willow. "I swear the kid doesn't have a filter between his brain and his mouth."
"We'll be quieter from now on," the redhead promised.
"Please don't. I need to get my entertainment from somewhere since the Woodman doesn't believe in cable."
Willow looked askance at her friend. "Andrew isn't the only one who needs a filter."
Catherine delicately cleared her throat. "You know, I'm trying to make a dramatic announcement here and I get the feeling that you're not focusing. I feel like I should find a spotlight and stand in it just so I can get your undivided attention."
"Ahhh, nowI know you're a Watcher," Giles nodded.
"They're worse that we are," Charlie cheerfully agreed.
"Take that back," J'Nal protested with a headache-filled moan. "I refuse to give up my short attention span crown to a group less technologically advanced than we are."
Catherine let her face drop into her hands. "Why do I bother? Why?"
Ruda nudged her in the ribs. "You wouldn't have it any other way."
"But it is irritating when the children keep nattering on and on when you're trying to interrupt with an 'oh dear'," Giles said sympathetically.
"That's because it takes an 'oh good lord' before we know you mean business," Xander said.
"Are we going to let Ms. Catherine speak or not?" Robin asked irritably.
"Catherine," the woman in question said between clenched teeth. "Just Catherine."
"Quite right," Giles said. "Please do carry on Ms…I mean, Catherine."
"As I was saying," she shot a glare at her posse, as if expecting an interruption. When it was clear none was forthcoming, she continued, "As I was saying, we might not be able to give you all the information you want. You see, we come from other planets and we're from 834 years in the future."
"You're from a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?" Andrew squeaked. He looked down at his camera with a tragic expression, "Please tell me I remembered to put a videotape in this."
"I think you mean a long, long time ahead in a galaxy far, far away," Xander said. Even though Faith could hear the joking tone, she noticed his expression revealed a mix of disbelief coupled with worry.
"Ummm, same galaxy, actually," J'Nal corrected. "It's a big place, see, and it would take…"
"Besides, they can't cross the edge of the galaxy," Andrew said with a look of disgust at Xander, as if Xander was the one who first suggested that their guests came from outside the Milky Way. "Remember when the Enterprise tried it in 'Where No Man Has Gone Before?' Bad things happened. Very bad things. Clearly they're from the Delta Quadrant."
"What's he talking about?" Charlie asked. "Delta quadrant? The hada?"
"Andrew? You really need to read that book I lent you," Willow said.
"A Short History of Nearly Everything?" Andrew whined. "But it's not nearly short enough."
"Now my head is beginning to spin," Xander complained.
"Can anyone follow this?" Catherine plaintively asked. "J'Nal?"
"No idea," J'Nal said.
"Everyone, please!" Catherine ordered, exasperation showing in her voice. "Look, long and short: We are from the same galaxy; yes, we are human; yes, we are from the future; and yes, none of us are from Tara."
"Tara?" Willow whispered with wide eyes.
"I don't want to ask, I really don't," Dawn spoke up. "But Tara? What's a Tara?"
"This planet! The one we're standing on! Right here!" Catherine shouted in aggravation. "This. Is. Tara."
"No, this is earth," Xander corrected her. "Sure you have the right planet?"
"Didn't think of that," Charlie muttered.
"Don't go there," Catherine warned.
"Oooh, now that would be a story," Ms. Tikri cooed. "Crack Slayer team gets lost in time and space and winds up asking the wrong people for help."
"We are not…we did not get lost," J'Nal said. "We know exactly where we are. Cleveland 2003."
"But we meant to hit Moscow 2008," Ruda reminded him. "I mean, it's possible we didn't even hit the right planet." She turned to Xander and pleaded, "There is a Moscow here, right?"
"Yes," Robin answered.
"I wasn't asking you," Ruda sniffed, eyes not leaving Xander. She repeated her question, "Moscow?"
"There is a Moscow," Xander assured her. "But it sounds like you guys are really lost."
"Hey! You try hitting a target on the first try when you've got to account for the time/space Big Bang drift," J'Nal complained. "It's like trying to kill a rat on a planet located a light year away from you with a spatula. Not going to happen."
"But we're on the right planet." Ruda sounded as if Xander's word alone was good enough for her.
"Of course we're on the right planet," Catherine sighed. "Alexander Harris is here. Faith Lanoire is here. Buffy Summers is here. And the gentleman wearing the metal contraption on his face…"
"Glasses," Giles said.
"Gulahsssez," Catherine repeated, "must be Rupert Giles." She looked between Dawn and Willow. "Which one of you is Willow Rosenberg?"
"That would be me," Willow seemed taken aback that Catherine, who'd managed to recognize several complete strangers, didn't know who she was.
"Ahh, yes," Catherine peered closely at her. "Usually you're pictured with white hair."
"Oh." Willow sounded very relieved.
Catherine turned a smile on Buffy's sister, "And you must be Dawn."
"People know me. Cool," Dawn grinned. "I'm famous."
"Not that famous," Buffy said in an awed voice. "She didn't even know who you were."
"Well, her claim to fame is that she's just your sister," Ruda said.
"No need to be rude," Catherine said with disapproval.
"Sorry." Naturally, Ruda didn't act like she was sorry in the least by her dismissal.
"We're in the right place," Catherine stated firmly. "There are enough people with names that match those listed in the archives that I feel very comfortable stating that it's the right planet."
"Still wrong timeframe, though," Ms. Tikri said. "This story is going to be…"
"Not now," Catherine ordered.
"I'll have you up on charges for squelching freedom of the press," Ms. Tikri huffed.
"My defense is that I'm squelching your mouth," Catherine shot back.
"Same thing," Ms. Tikri replied.
"See? There's nothing wrong with us. They do it, too," Dawn said with satisfaction as she crossed her arms.
"You might want to inject an 'oh dear' here," Giles offered. "Perhaps an 'oh good lord,' since I've been informed by reliable sources that's the only way anyone knows I mean business."
Catherine scrubbed a hand through her hair so hard that everyone thought sure she was going to have a handful of the stuff when she was finished. "I can't win," she said with an edge of despair. "I just can't win."
TBC…