Disclaimer: I own... hmm. I own nothing. The bank owns any money I make, at the moment. The concepts building 1001Keys do not belong to me, most probably.
Feedback: Why not? It helps me write more and better...
Crossover: Megatokyo
MusicThisWasWrittenTo: Lynyrd Skynyrd and Meshuggah
Pre-fic Comments:
Guess who popped into my mind when the playlist hit 'Gimme Back My Bullets'?
Buffy was worried. All day, Xander had been as silent as the grave. Normally it was nigh impossible to get the brunette to be silent for half a minute, but all day... zip.
Currently, Buffy, Xander, and Giles were checking out a tomb that got ransacked the other night by a vampire. Giles insisted that they should investigate the mausoleum, to try and find some clues as to what the vampire could have stolen.
Unfortunately, the librarian was still adjusting to having to adjust to having two bodies, effectively, both with different centers of gravity. The two teenagers had had longer to adjust to their particular body-altering changes, and thus were more than easily keeping pace.
"Buffy! Slow down! Please!," Giles called out.
"Giles, we have work to do, remember? Get with the program," the Slayer teased, somewhat maliciously.
"You're behaving remarkably im-immaturely," the Watcher accused.
"You know why? I am immature," the Slayer retorted. "I'm a teen. I have yet to mature."
"I was," Giles paused, searching for diplomatic words, "simply offering some constructive criticism."
"No! You were harsh! God, you act like I picked this gig. But remember, I'm the picked," Buffy complained.
"Easy there, Buffster," Xander said softly.
"Xander?," Buffy asked. "What's been eating you?"
"Cordelia pointed out to me earlier that I was using her, and that's not like me," Xander said quietly. "I... think that that demon changed me, and I'm not sure I like the changes any more."
"Well, TANSTAAFL, as the old saying goes," Giles said philosophically.
"Tans stifle?," Buffy asked. "Is that Dutch or something?"
"No, an acronym," Giles said. "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. An American coined it, Robert Heinlein, in his book 'The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress'."
"I mean, it's like I can't have sex with anyone, but I have to at the same time," Xander continued. "Cos I need the energy to live, but it's addictive to most people."
"It does seem something of a quandary," Giles admitted. "But Buffy, as to your previous comment, what you have is more than a gig. It's a sacred duty, which shouldn't prevent you from eventually procuring some more gainful form of employment. Such as I did."
"Well, I guess I could get a job doing consulting or something, where I could do whatever I want when I want," Buffy said thoughtfully.
"Wow, deep!," Xander exclaimed. "Who stole our little Buffy? Who're you?"
The Slayer smiled. "The Marilith demon bitch was smart, heck, she was a general of Hell."
"Er, people," Giles called out.
"What?," Xander asked. Giles shone the torch in his hand at the mausoleum they'd come in search of. "Oh!"
The three walked into the tomb. Dust carpeted the floor of the chamber, punctuated by two large stone vases and a pile of rubble underneath a gaping hole carved into one of the walls. Giles walked over to the wall, observing it. He pulled out a small box, shining the torch on it.
"It's a reliquary," Giles explained. "Used to house items of religious significance. Most commonly a finger or some other body part from a saint."
"Note to self: religion: freaky," Buffy said, smiling. She leant against the wall, as Xander sat on the steps descending into the chamber.
"Du Lac," Giles read out from a stone high above their heads. "Oh dear, oh dear."
"Why can't you say 'Yippee!' or something for a change?," Xander asked plaintively. "You know, good news noises."
"Josephus du Lac was buried here," Giles recalled out loud. "He belonged to a religious sect that was excommunicated by the Vatican at the turn of the century."
"Excommunicated and sent to Sunnydale," the Slayer grinned. "There's a guy big with the sinning."
"You remember the book that was stolen from the library by a vampire a few weeks ago?"
"Yeah," the two teenagers said.
"It was written by Du Lac. Damn it! I let it slip my mind with all the excitement," Giles cursed.
"I'm guessing it wasn't a 'Taste of the Vatican' cookbook," Buffy joked.
"Hey, even if it wasn't, it had to have been a better cookbook than what my mum uses," Xander said.
They start out of the mausoleum. "No, the, uh, book was said to contain rituals and spells that reap unspeakable evil," Giles corrected them as they began to leave the tomb. "However, it was written in archaic Latin so that nobody but the sect members could understand it."
"So, everything's cool then," Buffy said. If the vamps couldn't read it, then they couldn't do anything with it.
"It's not. First the book was taken from the library, and now the vampires have stolen something from Du Lac's tomb," Giles said.
"You think they figured out how to read the book?," Buffy realised.
"Something's coming, Buffy, and whatever it is," the Watcher said grimly, "I can guarantee it's not good."
The hardware store owner looked out the door as the strange, very strange man staggered out with a load of peculiar parts.
"I think he was one of them drug addicts," the man said to one of his employees. "Maybe one of those PCP guys the cops are always after."
"Yeah?," the teenager asked.
"Yeah. He had a bunch of half inch tubing, some four inch PVC piping, a showerhead, and a pump. Aaaand," the man said, drawing out his trump card, "he said he was making a bong."
"I thought he was one of them computer geeks," the teenager said.
The shop owner shook his head. "Crazy, every one of them."
Post-fic Comments:
Two guesses as to who the computer nerd was. And the first doesn't count.
He's making an Evaporative Cooling Tower, commonly called 'bongs'. Hardcore overclockers use them in watercooling apparatus. They work better than radiators, depending on the scale. Here're a couple of links (remove the spaces) :-
http:www http:eyecannon . com/bong.html