Okay, finally
I've finished the fourth chapter of Change.
Any comments, big or small, are greatly appreciated and will help me get the next chapter out that much sooner. Enthusiasm does that. Also panic, but that's only with assignments :-).
Enjoy!
--
Blinky the Tree Frog
Part Four
"When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone."
- Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb
Andrew was up very early that morning. It wasn't that he didn't want the sleep, of course, but he was the cook and he needed to have the stew portions done and frozen before people started coming in for breakfast. He was being useful. He was being part of the team. This was the first step on the road to his redemption!
He hummed a little as he worked. He'd found the kitchen scales and had decided to measure the stew out into the individual portions. After all, it wouldn't do to have uneven servings; that way people might get too much or too little. Of course, the last serving would be smaller than the rest, but he could save that for his own lunch so everything turned out…
The phone rang. He jumped.
What on earth? It was six o'clock in the morning! Who'd be calling now? People would get woken up, and everyone really needed their sleep around here. Fighting evil was really tiring work! He lunged for the handset and scooped it up as quickly as he could. Hopefully everyone was still getting their rest.
"Hello, Summers residence." He thought it was only fair that he say something like that, because he didn't usually live here and people might get confused otherwise. Also, he'd made answering the phone kind of his other official job, so of course he had to do it properly.
There was silence on the other end of the phone, and he frowned. "Hello? Hello?"
This was irritating. Had someone called a wrong number at six am? Some people were so inconsiderate! "Okay, I'm going to hang up if I don't hear something in the next ten seconds, okay?" That was fair. No one could say he hadn't given a warning then, could they?
Ten seconds later he sighed and put back the handset. Honestly, some people. Not only was it really early, what if someone important needed to call while the phone was tied up? Society really had to work on cultivating better phone manners.
***************
Tucker yawned, stretched, and pulled himself to his feet. The old factory that he'd spent the night in was far from the best place he'd ever slept in, but at least he'd gotten to eat before settling down for the night. Ahh, vampires. They were always so damn sure of their own superiority. He cricked his neck distractedly and looked at the sky. Still early, by the look of it.
He'd eaten vampires before so he hadn't actually been able steal any new abilities from good old Steve, but he did feel a lot more refreshed. Probably more sleep would be a good idea but really he just wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.
Of course considering that he'd just time travelled back ten years and no one here knew what had happened to him or what he was planning to do, it didn't actually matter how long it took for him to find and eviscerate Andrew. Hell, in this time period, most people probably wouldn't even care what happened to his weedy little brother. It was just…
There was this irritating anxious feeling that lingered at the back of his neck, and he suspected that it wasn't going to go away until he'd separated the twerp's head from his body. Besides, it was only sensible not to count your chickens before they hatched, right? Tucker liked to think that he was sensible. Okay, previously he'd been a bit of an idiot; but now, now that he had wonderful demonic powers and an actual plan, now he was definitely a sensible guy.
So sensibly, he was going to kill his little brother as quickly as possible and then, when Tucker was damn sure that there wasn't anyone to stop him, then he'd go enjoy himself.
Besides, it ought to be a laugh.
*****************
Buffy took the stairs two at a time while running a brush through her hair. Damn it! Late! She swerved into the kitchen, which was currently filled pretty much to the bursting point. God, and there were more potentials arriving everyday. This was really going to get nightmarish eventually.
"Hey Buffy!" Willow looked up from where she appeared to be surfing the net on her laptop with one hand and eating cereal with the other.
"Hey. Can't talk. Late."
"I did kinda notice that, but you looked so tired."
"I don't think that's really a legit excuse unfortunately, Will. Hey did someone eat the breakfast bars? I need something quick."
"I ate one!" Vi piped up helpfully from where she'd been scanning the cupboards.
Rona nodded. "Me too. I emptied them out on the table and everyone dove in. I thought there were a couple left though. Hey Clem, did you see the breakfast bars? They were right near you."
Clem looked up from scanning the Sunnydale Times. "Near me? Well I don't… Oh, wait!" He stood up and gave himself a quick shake. Two slightly crumpled breakfast bars fell obligingly onto the table. "There you go! I must have leant on them. They still look alright though, you want one?"
Buffy tried not to look appalled. She didn't want to insult him or anything, after all. It was just…
"I'm… thinking I'm not really feeling like breakfast bars right now anyway," she said in a voice that she hoped sounded tactful. Having demons in the house brought a whole new set of etiquette rules that no one had ever taught her how to deal with.
"Don't forget your lunch! I packed up my stew in quick nutritious servings using Tupperware's fully microwavable containers! You can let it sit during the day and then put it in the microwave for about two minutes, maybe about three if you want to be really safe, then…"
"Andrew, please!" God, having Andrew in the house brought a whole other set of etiquette rules that no one had taught her how to deal with. "I'm okay. I can get something at the cafeteria."
He looked crestfallen. "But this is nutritious! You need to keep your energy up as our leader and commander!"
"Commander?! Andrew, for heaven's sake…"
Dawn interrupted her. "It really is good stew, Buffy."
"And it's nutritious!" He looked hopeful.
She sighed and caved. "Okay, fine, nutritious, great."
Andrew looked a lot more pleased than the situation called for, but then, he usually did. "You won't regret this decision! And if you'd like to use my services in future I can make some other exciting dinners…"
"Andrew…"
"I saw this great recipe for Mongolian lamb…"
"Andrew!"
"I'm just saying…" A harsh ringing cut through the kitchen. "Ooh! Phone! I'll get it!"
The Slayer looked vastly relieved. Dawn grinned at her and mouthed, "Saved by the bell."
Buffy was gone by the time Andrew had hung up the phone, which meant she didn't hear him complaining that this was the third prank phone call he'd gotten that day. Not that it really mattered; she probably wouldn't have thought anything of it anyway. There were more important things to worry about.
***************
Tucker stood in the house where he'd spent most of his early years and scowled.
He'd expected that finding Andrew would be a fairly easy job. Sure, he hadn't actually been paying attention to Andrew's movements up until the point when they met up again nine and a half years in the future, and he'd pretty much lost contact with his family right after graduation when he moved several states away and then got jailed for robbery, and he'd never been really close to them anyway and…
Okay, so he probably shouldn't have expected things to be that easy. But honestly, Andrew was the king of geeks at this point. Tucker had figured that he'd be living with their idiot parents till at least twenty-five.
He was apparently wrong. There was definite evidence that the Wells family still resided in this particular house, but there was no sign of Andrew and what used to be his room had apparently been turned into a place for storing his mother's sewing experiments. Andrew wasn't here. Where the hell was he? How the hell was he supposed to find the idiot? This sucked.
He frowned to himself. Okay, think logically. His mom would know where Andrew was. All he had to do was wait until she got home and threaten a bit of torture…
He jumped as the phone rang and then grumbled and threw himself onto the couch. This day was so far turning out to be really annoying, and now he was going to have to deal with his mother as well. Of course, that might be amusing, especially if he had to get to the torture stage…
"…sorry but the Wells family is currently out of the state and won't be back until the 29th. If you have an urgent message our cell phone number is…"
He stared at the answering machine in minor disbelief. He did not just hear that. That was just…
"Arrgh!" He jumped up, and kicked the coffee table across the room. God! And who the hell left a message on their machine talking about how they weren't going to be at their house anyway? A retard! His mother was a stupid, moronic, idiotic retard, and she was damn lucky that she wasn't here, because right about now he really wanted to smash her head in. And pull out her spine. And cut off her hands and put them in the blender. Dammit!
He walked up to the answering machine, unplugged it, dropped it, and then stomped it into tiny little pieces. There, that felt a bit better. So his mother wasn't going to help. That was fine, that was okay. He wasn't fucking stupid for god's sake, was he? He'd find Andrew on his own. No problem.
Where would Andrew be likely to be if he wasn't here? With friends? His little brother had actually managed to get a few of those, even despite the perpetual loser status. There was the guy who did the electronic stuff… Warren? Warren Mears? And the short guy. Jonathan. Class loser. And there were those little kids, the ones who were about three grades below him that he played Magic: The Gathering with in school lunch times. God, he didn't even remember their names. And there was… okay, there really wasn't anyone else that he could think of, which really just reinforced the whole loser status thing. He'd start there. Jonathan Levinson. Warren Mears. How hard could it be to find them?
**************
"So, whatcha doing?"
Willow looked up from her laptop and frowned at Andrew. "I'm accessing a database of demons."
He bounced on his toes in the doorway. "Oh cool. So you're like, trying to find out about that…"
She gritted her teeth. "Yes Andrew, I'm trying to find out about that. I also really need to concentrate, so if you want to be quiet…"
"Okay, sure." He walked into the room, sat down, and stared innocently at her. Constantly. Unblinkingly.
She managed about two minutes before she cracked. "Andrew! Will you please stop it!?"
He jumped up at her outburst, suddenly looking terrified. "Okay! I'm sorry! Don't skin me! I'm going!"
Faintly disturbed, she snapped, "Andrew!"
He stopped at the doorway and looked back at her nervously. She took a deep breath. "Andrew, I'm not going to… hurt you in any way. I mean, I'm really, really not. I'm just… This is just important and I'd just rather not have you sitting there and… distracting me… okay?"
He looked a little more at ease. "Okay."
"Why don't you go talk to Clem?"
"He's talking with the potentials who didn't have to go to school about sports teams. It's kinda boring."
"Okay, fine. Maybe you could do some more cooking or something?"
"Well I would, but we're running out of ingredients. I need Xander to go to the store…"
"Right. So maybe you could…" There was a jangling ring, and she latched onto it. "Answer the phone! There you go!"
He heaved a sigh. "Well, okay, but it's probably going to be another prank call. I hope this isn't connected to the First Evil or anything."
She smiled slightly. "I doubt it. Probably just some punk kid having fun."
******************
Andrew Wells, ten years plus, put the phone receiver down and pulled himself out of the phone box. He winced and rubbed his temples as he made his way back to the abandoned building that was currently being used as their refuge. Walking back and forth from there and the public phone really wasn't doing his head much good (still recovering from his recent bout of time travel as it was), but at least the constant checking reassured him that his younger self was at the Summers' house and in a relatively safe environment. Now he just had to hope that he stayed in the house until Tucker had been found and dealt with.
Due to her extremely ill thought out answering machine message, he even had the comfort of knowing that his mother was out of town. The house would probably be ransacked by the time she got back, obviously, but at least she wasn't going to get ripped apart by her nutso son-from-the-future. He winced again. Now all he needed was for this nagging headache to go away, and for Dust to wake up, and then the two of them could actually get to work.
He hoped it wasn't going to take too long. Tucker had enough of a lead on them as it was.
*************
Any comments, big or small, are greatly appreciated and will help me get the next chapter out that much sooner. Enthusiasm does that. Also panic, but that's only with assignments :-).
Enjoy!
--
Blinky the Tree Frog
Part Four
"When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone."
- Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb
Andrew was up very early that morning. It wasn't that he didn't want the sleep, of course, but he was the cook and he needed to have the stew portions done and frozen before people started coming in for breakfast. He was being useful. He was being part of the team. This was the first step on the road to his redemption!
He hummed a little as he worked. He'd found the kitchen scales and had decided to measure the stew out into the individual portions. After all, it wouldn't do to have uneven servings; that way people might get too much or too little. Of course, the last serving would be smaller than the rest, but he could save that for his own lunch so everything turned out…
The phone rang. He jumped.
What on earth? It was six o'clock in the morning! Who'd be calling now? People would get woken up, and everyone really needed their sleep around here. Fighting evil was really tiring work! He lunged for the handset and scooped it up as quickly as he could. Hopefully everyone was still getting their rest.
"Hello, Summers residence." He thought it was only fair that he say something like that, because he didn't usually live here and people might get confused otherwise. Also, he'd made answering the phone kind of his other official job, so of course he had to do it properly.
There was silence on the other end of the phone, and he frowned. "Hello? Hello?"
This was irritating. Had someone called a wrong number at six am? Some people were so inconsiderate! "Okay, I'm going to hang up if I don't hear something in the next ten seconds, okay?" That was fair. No one could say he hadn't given a warning then, could they?
Ten seconds later he sighed and put back the handset. Honestly, some people. Not only was it really early, what if someone important needed to call while the phone was tied up? Society really had to work on cultivating better phone manners.
***************
Tucker yawned, stretched, and pulled himself to his feet. The old factory that he'd spent the night in was far from the best place he'd ever slept in, but at least he'd gotten to eat before settling down for the night. Ahh, vampires. They were always so damn sure of their own superiority. He cricked his neck distractedly and looked at the sky. Still early, by the look of it.
He'd eaten vampires before so he hadn't actually been able steal any new abilities from good old Steve, but he did feel a lot more refreshed. Probably more sleep would be a good idea but really he just wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.
Of course considering that he'd just time travelled back ten years and no one here knew what had happened to him or what he was planning to do, it didn't actually matter how long it took for him to find and eviscerate Andrew. Hell, in this time period, most people probably wouldn't even care what happened to his weedy little brother. It was just…
There was this irritating anxious feeling that lingered at the back of his neck, and he suspected that it wasn't going to go away until he'd separated the twerp's head from his body. Besides, it was only sensible not to count your chickens before they hatched, right? Tucker liked to think that he was sensible. Okay, previously he'd been a bit of an idiot; but now, now that he had wonderful demonic powers and an actual plan, now he was definitely a sensible guy.
So sensibly, he was going to kill his little brother as quickly as possible and then, when Tucker was damn sure that there wasn't anyone to stop him, then he'd go enjoy himself.
Besides, it ought to be a laugh.
*****************
Buffy took the stairs two at a time while running a brush through her hair. Damn it! Late! She swerved into the kitchen, which was currently filled pretty much to the bursting point. God, and there were more potentials arriving everyday. This was really going to get nightmarish eventually.
"Hey Buffy!" Willow looked up from where she appeared to be surfing the net on her laptop with one hand and eating cereal with the other.
"Hey. Can't talk. Late."
"I did kinda notice that, but you looked so tired."
"I don't think that's really a legit excuse unfortunately, Will. Hey did someone eat the breakfast bars? I need something quick."
"I ate one!" Vi piped up helpfully from where she'd been scanning the cupboards.
Rona nodded. "Me too. I emptied them out on the table and everyone dove in. I thought there were a couple left though. Hey Clem, did you see the breakfast bars? They were right near you."
Clem looked up from scanning the Sunnydale Times. "Near me? Well I don't… Oh, wait!" He stood up and gave himself a quick shake. Two slightly crumpled breakfast bars fell obligingly onto the table. "There you go! I must have leant on them. They still look alright though, you want one?"
Buffy tried not to look appalled. She didn't want to insult him or anything, after all. It was just…
"I'm… thinking I'm not really feeling like breakfast bars right now anyway," she said in a voice that she hoped sounded tactful. Having demons in the house brought a whole new set of etiquette rules that no one had ever taught her how to deal with.
"Don't forget your lunch! I packed up my stew in quick nutritious servings using Tupperware's fully microwavable containers! You can let it sit during the day and then put it in the microwave for about two minutes, maybe about three if you want to be really safe, then…"
"Andrew, please!" God, having Andrew in the house brought a whole other set of etiquette rules that no one had taught her how to deal with. "I'm okay. I can get something at the cafeteria."
He looked crestfallen. "But this is nutritious! You need to keep your energy up as our leader and commander!"
"Commander?! Andrew, for heaven's sake…"
Dawn interrupted her. "It really is good stew, Buffy."
"And it's nutritious!" He looked hopeful.
She sighed and caved. "Okay, fine, nutritious, great."
Andrew looked a lot more pleased than the situation called for, but then, he usually did. "You won't regret this decision! And if you'd like to use my services in future I can make some other exciting dinners…"
"Andrew…"
"I saw this great recipe for Mongolian lamb…"
"Andrew!"
"I'm just saying…" A harsh ringing cut through the kitchen. "Ooh! Phone! I'll get it!"
The Slayer looked vastly relieved. Dawn grinned at her and mouthed, "Saved by the bell."
Buffy was gone by the time Andrew had hung up the phone, which meant she didn't hear him complaining that this was the third prank phone call he'd gotten that day. Not that it really mattered; she probably wouldn't have thought anything of it anyway. There were more important things to worry about.
***************
Tucker stood in the house where he'd spent most of his early years and scowled.
He'd expected that finding Andrew would be a fairly easy job. Sure, he hadn't actually been paying attention to Andrew's movements up until the point when they met up again nine and a half years in the future, and he'd pretty much lost contact with his family right after graduation when he moved several states away and then got jailed for robbery, and he'd never been really close to them anyway and…
Okay, so he probably shouldn't have expected things to be that easy. But honestly, Andrew was the king of geeks at this point. Tucker had figured that he'd be living with their idiot parents till at least twenty-five.
He was apparently wrong. There was definite evidence that the Wells family still resided in this particular house, but there was no sign of Andrew and what used to be his room had apparently been turned into a place for storing his mother's sewing experiments. Andrew wasn't here. Where the hell was he? How the hell was he supposed to find the idiot? This sucked.
He frowned to himself. Okay, think logically. His mom would know where Andrew was. All he had to do was wait until she got home and threaten a bit of torture…
He jumped as the phone rang and then grumbled and threw himself onto the couch. This day was so far turning out to be really annoying, and now he was going to have to deal with his mother as well. Of course, that might be amusing, especially if he had to get to the torture stage…
"…sorry but the Wells family is currently out of the state and won't be back until the 29th. If you have an urgent message our cell phone number is…"
He stared at the answering machine in minor disbelief. He did not just hear that. That was just…
"Arrgh!" He jumped up, and kicked the coffee table across the room. God! And who the hell left a message on their machine talking about how they weren't going to be at their house anyway? A retard! His mother was a stupid, moronic, idiotic retard, and she was damn lucky that she wasn't here, because right about now he really wanted to smash her head in. And pull out her spine. And cut off her hands and put them in the blender. Dammit!
He walked up to the answering machine, unplugged it, dropped it, and then stomped it into tiny little pieces. There, that felt a bit better. So his mother wasn't going to help. That was fine, that was okay. He wasn't fucking stupid for god's sake, was he? He'd find Andrew on his own. No problem.
Where would Andrew be likely to be if he wasn't here? With friends? His little brother had actually managed to get a few of those, even despite the perpetual loser status. There was the guy who did the electronic stuff… Warren? Warren Mears? And the short guy. Jonathan. Class loser. And there were those little kids, the ones who were about three grades below him that he played Magic: The Gathering with in school lunch times. God, he didn't even remember their names. And there was… okay, there really wasn't anyone else that he could think of, which really just reinforced the whole loser status thing. He'd start there. Jonathan Levinson. Warren Mears. How hard could it be to find them?
**************
"So, whatcha doing?"
Willow looked up from her laptop and frowned at Andrew. "I'm accessing a database of demons."
He bounced on his toes in the doorway. "Oh cool. So you're like, trying to find out about that…"
She gritted her teeth. "Yes Andrew, I'm trying to find out about that. I also really need to concentrate, so if you want to be quiet…"
"Okay, sure." He walked into the room, sat down, and stared innocently at her. Constantly. Unblinkingly.
She managed about two minutes before she cracked. "Andrew! Will you please stop it!?"
He jumped up at her outburst, suddenly looking terrified. "Okay! I'm sorry! Don't skin me! I'm going!"
Faintly disturbed, she snapped, "Andrew!"
He stopped at the doorway and looked back at her nervously. She took a deep breath. "Andrew, I'm not going to… hurt you in any way. I mean, I'm really, really not. I'm just… This is just important and I'd just rather not have you sitting there and… distracting me… okay?"
He looked a little more at ease. "Okay."
"Why don't you go talk to Clem?"
"He's talking with the potentials who didn't have to go to school about sports teams. It's kinda boring."
"Okay, fine. Maybe you could do some more cooking or something?"
"Well I would, but we're running out of ingredients. I need Xander to go to the store…"
"Right. So maybe you could…" There was a jangling ring, and she latched onto it. "Answer the phone! There you go!"
He heaved a sigh. "Well, okay, but it's probably going to be another prank call. I hope this isn't connected to the First Evil or anything."
She smiled slightly. "I doubt it. Probably just some punk kid having fun."
******************
Andrew Wells, ten years plus, put the phone receiver down and pulled himself out of the phone box. He winced and rubbed his temples as he made his way back to the abandoned building that was currently being used as their refuge. Walking back and forth from there and the public phone really wasn't doing his head much good (still recovering from his recent bout of time travel as it was), but at least the constant checking reassured him that his younger self was at the Summers' house and in a relatively safe environment. Now he just had to hope that he stayed in the house until Tucker had been found and dealt with.
Due to her extremely ill thought out answering machine message, he even had the comfort of knowing that his mother was out of town. The house would probably be ransacked by the time she got back, obviously, but at least she wasn't going to get ripped apart by her nutso son-from-the-future. He winced again. Now all he needed was for this nagging headache to go away, and for Dust to wake up, and then the two of them could actually get to work.
He hoped it wasn't going to take too long. Tucker had enough of a lead on them as it was.
*************
