A/N: Reviews are nice.
Chapter Thirty-Six; Conformity.
1 Similarity in form or character; agreement: I acted in conformity with my principles.
2 Action or behaviour in correspondence with socially accepted standards, conventions, rules, or laws: conformity to university regulations.
3 Geology. The relationship between adjacent layers of sedimentary rock.
From slowly dispersed into the misty horizons, like a seagull flying out to sea on a windy day. June came and with it also came countless exams, and astoundingly hot summers days. Ginny didn't say a word to anyone about her and Malfoys passionate kiss, she kept it bottled inside making her irritable and an easy target to tease. She spent her days locked up in the shady common room revising or crammed in stuffy classrooms, and her evenings avoiding Harry desperately.
Faye was starting to piss her of greatly, she didn't understand how Faye could be a druggie one minute and then snap back to model student the next. Faye continually out whited her in class although she had missed so many previous lessons. Kaiya was struggling worse than she ever had, Ginny swore she saw Malfoy terrorising Kaiya more than once, but dismissed it as normal Malfoy behaviour.Ginny new deep down in her heart that there was something more to the big picture, a tiny spot she couldn't quite place.
000
Watchers Council H.Q.
Swirl, swirl, swirl. All Charlie could see was swirls, they asphyxiated him, clasped onto his head with their slimy hands. They were endlessly tugging him, ripping him apart, he was shredded as if he was paper. He walked around the school in a trance, he obeyed his master and only his master.
Charlie's P.O.V
12:00 p.m.
Lunch time, it's the worst time of the day. All the girls are running about in their skimpy outfits, they somehow manage to bag all the good food so all that's left is rabbit food. That's the thing about slayers they have huge appetites nothing can satisfy them except the kill, that's why they have to go first.
1:00 p.m.
A sweltering heat blew in my face as I opened the swing doors. The room was filled with a piss yellow coloured sunlight. The air was thick with dust and the smell of blood lust. I walked strait up to the counter and pressed my face against the cool glass showcase, my nose made a smooth smudge on the surface.
"How much?" I asked breathlessly.
"$40.99, it's the very best," said a sweaty bearded man behind the till.
"I'll take it!" I said gleefully as he handed me the shiny new rifle.
3:00 p.m.
What a shiny rifle, so shiny so pretty, but it'll be even prettier when it's stained with little girlies blood. Shiny, shiny, shiny.
5:00 p.m.
I wanted it to be dark, so dark, so I could start. But I had to be patient like he told me to be. Oh I wanted it to happen that second I really did.
12:00 a.m.
I crept through the dark hallways, by shoes squeaking on the neatly polished tiles. Deep velvet curtains and oddly shaped paintings followed me down to my destination. I walked with a misty ease into the controls room, I held my rifle high in glory. A redheaded slayer wearing a beaded mini dress was sitting lazily at the monitors, she hadn't noticed me enter. She swivelled her chair round irritably and reached out to grab her coffee, and then she saw me.
I stood in front of her pretty face with my rifle aimed at her brain. I watched as her expression changed from confusion to horror, her eyes wide she opened her mouth to scream but...BANG! A steady flow of clotted blood streamed out of her head in gushes of screaming agony. Her petite body slumped back over the chair, her legs wide and her eyes opened in placid content. I stepped over her excitedly.
The mass of buttons and leavers flashed menacingly, everything was silent. I pulled the long red leaver and the power went out immediately, including the security cameras. I set of an alarm so that all the residence of the house where forced to rush into the emergency room in the basement.
I waited in anticipation for all the yelling to die down as the load girls made their way into the secure room. My heart was thumping and sweat trickled down my face, I felt ill with glee. Next to come was the red button, I pressed it feverishly, now their was no escape for them, the only way out was up where I was. I looked up in triumph, it was time.
London, Scoobies H.Q.
A full blaze of sunlight heated the living room satisfyingly. Giles held up the golden key necklace in defeat.
"It appears that this key doesn't actually have any magical abilities, it is just a necklace," he said wearily.
"Great well that takes us right back to square one," Buffy said angrily.
"Oh well we'll figure it out somehow," Lola said happily from her perch on Spikes lap, she was just glad to have her necklace back.
"Well I for one am..." Willow began until the phone cut them of.
"I'll get it," Dawn said. She picked up the receiver, the girl was about to talk when a frantic monolog from the other end stumped her. "Vi calm down I can't hear you!" Dawn shouted.
"What is it?" Xander asked worriedly. Dawn put it on loud speaker in a shocked silence.
"We're locked in the basement! You have to help us! Christian he put us down hear with a T.V so we can see what he's doing! Oh god he has a gun...and he's trying to perform some kind of ritual, he keeps saying we will be the first to go! You have to come now, we don't have any weapons!" Vi shouted. The scoobies looked at each other in shock.
"What kind of thing is he trying to raise?" Buffy asked quickly.
"Buffy I think...I think it's...I think it's...Apollyon the destroyer," Vi whispered tearfully.
"What! So you're saying Christians trying to call upon Apollyon the Destroyer, prince of death, the bloody fag who goes around killing people for no reason?" Spike asked outraged.
"Yeah! Please stop him!" Vi cried
"We'll be right there," Buffy assured her.
Charlie's P.O.V
I scattered the sand around me in a blotchy circle. Everything was ready the candles where lit and now all I had to do was say the words, until a man in brown cords and a woman in black leather trousers burst through the door. Faith and Xander. Sweat trickled down my face as I looked at them angrily...I had to finish the ritual!
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" I shouted as I picked up my rifle and aimed it at them shakily.
"Christian put down the rifle you don't want to do this," Xander commanded me calmly.
"HOW WOULD YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT!" I screamed.
"I just do ok man, now everyone is just gonna chill out ok and you're gonna put down the rifle," Xander said stepping towards me.
"Don't come any closer!" I said swinging the rifle towards Faith who stepped back.
"Ok..ok," Xander raised his hands in surrender and stepped back. "Now Charlie do you want to tell me what you're doing?"
"They have to go! They all have to go!"
"Who have to go?"
"NO! I'm asking the questions!" I screamed, "Xander the question isn't who, the question is why, why do we conform? Hm?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Why do we obey rules, why do we conform ourselves to be like others?"
"I don't know," Xander said, he looked to the side catching site of the redhead lying in a pool of her own blood; he flinched.
"I'll tell you why! We conform because we have to! Now I have it's time for you...step over to the dark side...come into the h..." I felt a blow to by stomach suddenly. My rifle was sliding across the ground and I was falling to the hard floor. Faith pinned my arms down. All I could see was her mass of hair until all went black...forever.
000
An extract from the film diary of Andrew Wells;
Shot on the 16th of January 2007
A coil of ghostly smoke furls itself around the camera lenses, choking it in it's grey depths. As the smoke evaporates you begin to see the faint outline of a handsome man sitting cockily in a black leather armchair. The chair squeaks loudly as he shifts slightly, but never brakes eye contact with the camera.
"So Spike I have been told about those first few months of yours and Lola's relationship, but never from your lips," says the other voice.
"What do you want to know?" Spike says lazily.
"Everything about her, seeing as she...well she's in her currant state."
Spike chuckles and stares of at a white wall reminiscently, "Where to start? She was mad you know?" He says raising an eyebrow.
"Define mad?" The voice says .
"I mean she acted sort of crazy. I remember in those first few weeks I couldn't get enough of her but gradually she started to slip. I caught her with several different blokes, most of the time she was of her head on cocaine."
The camera zooms out. "What were the guys like?"
"They were usually covered in tattoos and peircings, tongues mostly. There was other stuff as well, see she had all these other people on the side along with her drugs, but whenever I even mentioned leaving her she went completely crazed and said she couldn't live without me and kill her now if I was gonna leave. She even asked me to sire her once."
"Why?"
Spike takes a drag of his long forgotten fag, drops it on the floor and lights another. "With Lola pain and pleasure were all one thing, I don't think she really knew what she was saying. See the thing was she probably couldn't live without me, she couldn't even take care of herself for a weekend. Lola pulls you into the whole world that completely contradicts the one you live in. There were the bad times when she wanted to off herself, but then there were the times when I felt like I was on one of the most colourful beautiful roundabouts in the world."
"What was it like when the times were good then?" the voice says sympathetically.
"It's hard to explain, I guess the one word would be impulsive but now with th..." The camera starts to jolt and the picture fuzzes over until it all goes black.
Jungleland
The Rangers had a homecoming
In Harlem late last night
And the Magic Rat drove his sleek machine
Over the Jersey state line
Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge
Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain
The Rat pulls into town rolls up his pants
Together they take a stab at romance
And disappear down Flamingo Lane
Well the Maximum Lawmen run down Flamingo
Chasing the Rat and the barefoot girl
And the kids round here look just like shadows
Always quiet, holding hands
From the churches to the jails
Tonight all is silence in the world
As we take our stand
Down in Jungleland
The midnight gang's assembled
And picked a rendezvous for the night
They'll meet 'neath that giant Exxon sign
That brings this fair city light
Man there's an opera out on the Turnpike
There's a ballet being fought out in the alley
Until the local cops
Cherry Tops
Rips this holy night
The street's alive
As secret debts are paid
Contacts made, they vanish unseen
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades
Hustling for the record machine
The hungry and the hunted
Explode into rock'n'roll bands
That face off against each other out in the street
Down in Jungleland
In the parking lot the visionaries
Dress in the latest rage
Inside the backstreet girls are dancing
To the records that the DJ plays
Lonely-hearted lovers
Struggle in dark corners
Desperate as the night moves on
Just one look
And a whisper, and they're gone
Beneath the city two hearts beat
Soul engines running through a night so tender
In a bedroom locked
In whispers of soft refusal
And then surrender
In the tunnels uptown
The Rat's own dream guns him down
As shots echo down them hallways in the night
No one watches when the ambulance pulls away
Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light
Outside the street's on fire
In a real death waltz
Between what's flesh and what's fantasy
And the poets down here
Don't write nothing at all
They just stand back and let it all be
And in the quick of the night
They reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand
But they wind up wounded
Not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland
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