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:
This is what I've come up with in place of the cheerleader thingy. I really don't want to write about girls jumping around in pointless exertion (apart from the physical results of them jumping around... :-)
* * *
Jesse was looking for Xander at school the next day with a semi-worried look on his face.
He didn't find his friend until morning tea time.
"Xander! Uh, what are Twelveheart's Scrolls about?," the teenage walking hormone asked.
Xander looked up from the small brown book that Jesse had given him a few days ago. "Music spells, I think. Why?"
Willow found the two boys. "Hey, Xander. Get that Trig book okay?"
"Hold on a moment, Will? Now, Jesse, who mentioned the Scrolls?"
"Uh, the Bronze's owner did," Jesse said. "Something about some English guy doing the final rite from them tonight or something."
"Weird," Xander thought out loud. "Twelveheart is pretty obscure. Anything else get said?"
"Nope."
"Uh, Xander, Trig?," Willow asked. She had no intentions of going through the next grade alone while Xander and Jesse had to repeat the current one.
"Sorry, Wills, I've been busy with, uh, stuff," Xander said. He had a look of panicked guilt on his face. Jesse was nervously looking off into space about five feet past Willow's eyes, slightly up and to the left.
The redhead sighed. "Guys, I'm gonna come around to Jesse's place tonight and I expect to see you two there for study."
"Right, right," Jesse muttered. "I say we go find Giles and look up this final rite thing."
"We get study period, and we use it to actually study. Who'da thunk?," Xander joked.
* * *
"Who?," Giles asked. "I don't recall... oh! Here they are!"
The Watcher dug up a scroll, upsetting a pile of highlighted photocopies in the process. Xander took it from him and quickly scrolled through most of it to the final rites.
"Let's see... how to sing true love... how to get a good voice... here we go. Final Rite."
The four of them looked through the hard-to-read Olde English.
"Oh well," Giles said. "This shouldn't be too bad. All you lot listen to is bad love songs, in the end."
The three teenagers looked at each other nervously, before Willow spoke up.
"It... that is..."
"What?," Giles asked. "It might be embarassing, but hardly debilitating."
"Tonight is a theme night," Xander explained. "Northern European black metal and American Rock."
"Oh," Giles said, hands shaking as he cleaned his glasses. "Oh bugger."
"What?," Willow said. "The music sucks, but it isn't that bad, is it?"
"Best case," Xander said, "Everyone suicides. Worst case, they kill, mutilate and spindle everyone in town *then* suicide."
"He's right," Jesse said. "I know of at least one song, for example, that sings about killing all the christians, then getting thoroughly drunk."
"What's this?," Buffy asked as she walked into the Library. "Who's killing who?"
Giles briefly explained the problem to her.
"Oh," Buffy said. "People actually listen to that stuff?"
"Some people from L.A. come here each month just for Metal Night at the Bronze," Willow explained. "Sad but true."
"Can't we just steal their CD's or something?," Buffy suggested.
"No dice," Xander said. "I know the DJ. He plays vinyl records, which are bulky and incredibly hard to steal without being obvious."
"What about breaking them?," was Buffy's next suggestion.
Xander looked at Jesse. Jesse looked at Xander. They both then looked at Buffy.
"You have *got* to be joking," Jesse said.
"If you break Carl's records, he'll break your back," Xander said. "I'm not making this up, either. Last time someone spilt twink on his copy of the Black Album, he broke both their arms in multiple places."
"I guess we'll have to s-stop this British fellow from casting Twelveheart's Final Rite," Giles said.
Xander looked at the scroll again. "I think I can do a counter to it."
"You think so?," Jesse said. "Magic Hoover Rune?"
"Magic Tarbaby Rune."
* * *
Post-Fic Comments:
Regarding any generalisations about the music, blame it on the fact they're Californians or something. I dunno. I just googled for some lyrics by 'Cradle of Filth' and 'Amon Amarth' to get some ideas from. I might let some songs get played and affect people, I'll have to see.