Summary: Certain books have found their way to Sunnydale, pre-Buffy.
Disclaimer: I dun' own nuttin'!
Feedback, it makes me write faster. (You know you want to do the feedback thing.)
Pre-Fic Comments:
Doncha hate it when an idea grabs you and won't let you go? This chapter is proof that feedback does make me write.
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Xander found himself skateboarding into a railing on the first day of school. This was due, mostly, to the good-looking new student walking up to the front doors. Sunnydale wasn't a big town, and he knew almost all the students on sight.
Willow Rosenberg, a friend of his since kindergarten, stepped over his prone form, looking down curiously at him. Xander got back up.
"I'm okay, I'm good!," he announced. "Willow! You're very much the person I wanted to see!"
"Really?," the redheaded girl asked.
"Yeah," Xander confirmed. "I kinda had a problem with the math."
Willow blinked. "Uh, which part?"
"The math," Xander grumbled. "Can you help me out tonight, pleeeease, be my study buddy?"
"Well, what's in it for me?," Willow asked. The request for compensation was mostly form, part of the comfortable give and take they'd established as part of their friendship.
"A shiny nickel!," Xander tried. His friend seemed to accept that.
"Okay. Do you have 'Theories in Trig'?," she asked, expecting him to say yes.
"Nope," Xander said. He looked embarassed.
"No way," Willow teased. "You don't have a book?"
Their friend Jesse caught up with them inside the school. Like them, he was part of the outer fringe of the social fabric of the school, to be tolerated but never accepted by the recognised elite.
"Hey, hey!," Jesse said, greeting them. "Got something for you."
He handed over a small brown book. In return, Xander gave him a sheaf of photocopies. Xander paged through the book briefly.
"Nice, very nice," Xander said as he put it in his backpack. "See the new girl? Pretty much a hottie!"
"I heard someone was transferring," Willow contributed.
"So tell!," Xander demanded.
"Tell what, oh illuminated one?," Jesse replied, exasperated.
"What's the sitch, what do you know about her?"
"New girl!," Jesse said. It was obvious he had said all he knew in those two words.
"Well, you're certainly a fount of nothing!"
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On his way to class, Xander encountered the new girl. She had dropped her bag, and her belongings were scattered over the floor. He squatted next to her, helping her gather her things together.
"Can I have you?," Xander Freud'ed.
The new girl gave him a confused look.
"Duh...," Xander laughed. "Can I help you?"
"Thanks," the girl replied, a smile lighting her face.
"I don't know you, do I?"
"Buffy. I'm new," the girl said, stating the non-obvious and the obvious.
"Xander. Is, is me," he said, introducing himself.
"Um, thanks," Buffy said. They had finished the collection; the two got back to their feet.
"Well, uh, maybe I'll see you around," Xander said, trying to think of something smooth to say. "Maybe at school... since we... both... go there."
"Great!," Buffy said. "It was nice to meet you."
Xander mentally hit himself for being so very suave, very not pathetic. He noticed something they had missed, grabbing it from the ground.
"Strange... a stake? Must be the new Slayer Rupert was telling me about."
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Xander and Jesse caught up with Willow and the new girl, Buffy, at lunchtime. The two girls were talking, so the two boys interrupted.
"Hey!," Jesse greeted them, dropping his bag on the ground.
"You guys busy? Are we interrupting? We're interrupting," Xander said, throwing his bag to Jesse in a practiced movement.
"Hey!," the two girls said in unison.
"Hey there!," Jesse joked.
Willow sighed, then introduced them to Buffy. "Buffy, this is Jesse and that's Xander."
Buffy was too wound-out for Xander, so he decided to try and lighten the mood. "Oh, me and Buffy go waaay back, old friends, very close. Then there's that period of estrangement where I think we were both growing as people, but now here we are, like old times, I'm quite moved."
"Is it me or are you turning into a babbeling idiot?," Jesse asked, always ready to provide ego deflation.
"No, it's not, uh, you," Xander admitted.
"Well, it's nice to meet you guys," Buffy said. "I think."
Xander got Buffy's stake out from his bag, while Jesse tried for the greeting thing again.
"Well, you know, we wanted to welcome ya, make ya feel at home, unless you have a scary home...," Jesse rambled.
"And to return this," Xander said, holding up the wooden stake. "Hunting vampires, are we?"
"Hah, no, um, a-a-actually it was for self-defense. Everyone has them in L.A. Pepper spray is just so passé," Buffy said nervously. She was trying to avoid vampires! Those things were hell on her social life.
And so passed the rest of the lunchtime, until Cordelia arrived with news of the dead guy in the girls' locker room.
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Buffy stormed into the school library once she'd checked the dead guy. The librarian, Rupert Giles, was in a tweed suit, and looked to be upper-middle-aged. He was talking to Xander in the office.
"Okay, what's the sitch?," she demanded. The two bookworms looked up.
"Sorry?," Giles asked.
"You heard about the dead guy, right? The dead guy in the lockers?," she asked.
"Yes," Giles cagily confirmed.
"'Cause, it's the weirdest thing," Buffy growled. "He's got two little, little holes in his neck, and all his blood's been drained. Isn't that bizarre? Aren't you just going, ooo?"
Xander grimaced. Dead people was of the bad, most definitely.
"I was afraid of this," Giles said.
"Me, I was expecting it," Xander threw in.
"Well, *I* wasn't! It's my first day! I was afraid that I was gonna be behind in all my classes, that I wouldn't make any friends, that I would have last month's hair. I didn't think there'd be vampires on campus. And I don't care," Buffy said.
Xander started putting his books back in his bag. He had been preparing for vampires, but his supplies were back at his parent's house.
Giles and Buffy got into an arguement about Slaying vampires, the Hellmouth, and whether Buffy would continue with said slayage.
Xander? He decided to foot while he was ahead.
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Once he'd dodged his mother, Xander went down to the basement, where he stored his non-reference material. He dragged a large chest out from under the stairs, producing a large iron key to unlock it.
"Let's see...," he mused out loud.
"Xander! What're you doin' down there?," his dear old dad bellowed.
"Checking for rats!," Xander yelled back.
This provoked an insult, then blessed silence.
Xander carefully drew out a glass cube the size of his fist, placing it on an old shirt he had brought down with him for the purpose. It had an angular design etched on the top facet, but was otherwise unadorned. He also dug out five wooden stakes that he had prepared in a ritual a year ago. They had the same design as on the cube carved on the side of each.
He'd been looking forwards to being able to do this. He hadn't been able to previously, as there had been no one with enough experience for him to go out at night with.
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Post-Fic Comments:
I've kinda got an idea on where I'm going to go. Nothing concrete at all so far, just a vague idea. If anyone wants to suggest anything, go ahead. I'm thinking of bringing in the Hellsing 'verse (Iscariot 13, the Letzt Battalion etc.)