Fic: Souls, Slayers... and a Scythe???
Author: mkcrl120
Disclaimer: All the characters mentioned in this story belong to Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy or some other people. I own nothing and wrote this just to get it out of my system.
Summary: Set two weeks after the events in Explaining Africa 3
Authors Notes: I have no clue about Africa. Which is probably always a good place to start writing a story. So if details I've used for place names, and tribal names and whatever are wrong then just (correctly) assume I have no idea what I'm doing.
Rating: 15 by English standards (mainly for language)
Chapter 6c:
Amy was woken by the frantic knocking on the door.
Deciding to risk opening an eye, she was pleasantly surprised to discover it wasn't yet morning. 'Least I'm not wandering around the room praying for shade,' she thought to herself.
Lifting her head off the pillow; she looked around the room in the gloom, and was able to distinguish Faith still sleeping face down on top of the covers. The knocking still hadn't stopped.
'How the hell can she sleep through this racket with Slayer hearing?' She thought, as she sat up.
Deciding she wasn't happy with her current state of dress, she quickly wrapped her coat around herself. She stood over Faith and tried to awake her without letting the person on the door know she was there. "Faith..." She whispered, "Faith..." Getting no response, she tried prodding her gently. 'Don't want an enraged Slayer on my hands...' Faith was still breathing heavily, 'Though a conscious Slayer might be useful when people are attacking your door in the middle of the night.'
Moving closer to the door, Amy tried to identify the person through the keyhole. Unable to see anything more than a pair of grey trousers, she put her ear against the door and tried listening.
The voices she heard didn't belong to anyone she recognised.
"They're not fucking in."
"It's four am, go to bed."
"We have kids sleeping in here, you know."
"Look I apologise for disutrbance at the late hour, but can you all please Fuck Off?"
Recognising the final shout, Amy faced the door and asked. "Roger?"
"Amy... It's me, let me in."
"Hang on a moment." Amy moved to allow Faith some level of decency. Attempting to pull the covers over Faith, she was obstructed by the fact that Faith was lying on them. The amount of free covers left did not succeed in providing Faith with any modesty.
Looking around for something else, she could hear the voices start up outside again.
"Are they in or not?"
"Leave it, speak to them in the morning."
"It was definitely a female voice, can't believe we got woken up by some pervert looking for a booty call."
Amy grabbed one of her own pillows, and balanced it across Faith's back. Amy decided that wasn't enough so quickly draped another coat over that. Noticing some flesh was still visible she quickly gather some remaining clothes and placed them at Faith' side, completely removing any of Faith's upper body from view.
Amy opened the door to find Roger engaged in an argument with a younger man, who'd rented the room opposite. "I am not sleepi..."
She grabbed his collar and physically dragged him inside her room, giving an apologetic smile to the man facing her.
"It's early... what is it?"
"I thought I heard noises in the night and I wo..." Roger paused as he noticed how Faith was sleeping. "Does sh...?"
"She says it makes her comfortable." Amy shrugged his questioning look off. "You woke us up because you're scared of noises..? There are no demons under the bed, if that's what you're worrried about. Why didn't you wake Xander?"
"That's what I was trying to say. And I'm not scared of demons under the bed..." Roger suddenly looked deep in thought. "Well, I wasn't... Remember you said that a lot of the old fairytales and folk lore, normally had some basis in tru..."
"Roger..." Amy interrupted. "Why are you here?"
"Like I said, Xander's gone missing."
"You didn... Xander's gone missing?"
Roger began again, "I thought I heard noises in the night, but at the time I ignored them. A bit later on I needed the toilet..."
"Too much detail."
"When I returned to the bedroom, I noticed Xander's bed looked empty. I tried calling his name a few times but there was no answer."
"And you confirmed he wasn't there."
"Yes... So I got dressed and checked things out and discovered the jeep was gone too."
Amy moved back to sit on her own bed, taking the remaining pillow she propped it against the wall and used it as a backrest. "You sure he hasn't gone for a late night drive..? Today was pretty disappointing to him. The end of his quest, the one he actually came here for, and he still doesn't have the answers he wanted."
"You ever known Xander go driving at this time of night?" Roger moved to sit on the other end of Faith's bed.
"Only when we're out working."
"And in his state of mind, as you said, all the disappointment and so on. Would he be likely to do anything stupid?"
Amy thought back to what she'd learnt off Dawn. 'He could be everyone's rock. He was there to cheer you up when you really need it. There are times when he'd done the unexpected; Xander's not one you can fit into any category. Dawn had a bit of a crush growing up, so don't know how unbiased her thoughts were.' Trying to force herself to think of the more negative aspects, she continued her mental list. 'He can hold a grudge like no-one else. Don't hurt his friends, if you cross him in that way, well, not sure if he'd actually kill you, but he wouldn't shed a tear if you did die.' And the last one, 'If he's pissed at something or someone, then he won't be thinking straight... eventually he'll calm it down so it just becomes another grudge, or something to work through if it involves his actual friends; but initially he'll just be pissed and want to distance himself from people. It's his way of dealing.' "I don't think so... nothing we've seen or heard about him says he's the over-reacting type."
But the second she said it out loud, she realised could think of one tale of Xander over-reacting. "The wedding."
"The what?"
"Xander's wedding."
"What about it?"
"Some demon gave Xander false memories of the future."
"Memories of the future?"
"So..?"
"He walked away from his own wedding."
"Soooo... you think he's gone to clear his head?"
"No. I think he's pissed off and he'll jump to the first solution he comes up with."
"Which would be?"
"I don't know... See if you can get us a car, I'll wake Faith." Amy ordered, quickly ushering Roger out the room.
"Where the hell am I supposed to get a car at this time of nig..?" Roger asked as the door closed behind him.
Amy grabbed Faith by the leg half-hanging off the bed. Shaking it a little, she said. "Faith, get up. Xan's missing and we need to go looking for him."
Amy moved to her own bed and begun getting dressed properly.
She saw the pillow and coat slowly lift in the air. The coat was shortly pulled back enough to warrant Faith's hed to stick out. Moving her neck slightly, Faith checked out the weight on her back and the piles of used clothes surrounding her head.
"What the fuck?"
Roger was certain they'd walked over ten miles. Having been unable to find a car, they'd been forced to walk everywhere.
Finding anything open at that time of night had been impossible. They had met a few people strolling around though. His first impression had been that they must all be vampires. Having a vampire slayer walking alongside him wasn't coming as much benefit. Although most of the people hadn't been in groups bigger than two or three, he'd been counting them. If they all joined together then they were outnumbered at least five to one. And that was if they all fought.
Amy seemed to have no fear either. She'd been walking up to people, describing Xander to them. Stating that he may be travelling in a jeep.
Most of the people thought the idea of recognising a jeep was amusing. They themselves had see at least four since they'd been out.
Faith for the most part wasn't doing anything. Just walking alongside them, giving off a bored tone. 'Some vampire slayer.' Roger thought to himself. 'She's not scary at all... how the hell are demons supposed to be scared of her?'
She'd gotten rather sharp with him earlier.
He'd asked if she was sure her vampire radar was working. She'd looked at him like he was insane. Further questions about other people they'd seen, had met with the same response. When he asked how much of a wiggins she was feeling, she'd told him to fuck off. She hadn't spoken to anyone since.
It had turned Samson wasn't at his shop. 'Dammit, why didn't we find out where he'd lived.' He'd been thinking that for over twenty minutes before he finally bothered asking. None of the others knew either. He briefly wondered if Xander knew, then realised how stupid that was.
They'd reached the beach again. However this time they'd arrived by a footpath and Roger didn't recognise where they'd gone. Asking the others, he realised none of them recognised anything... mainly cos last time they were driving up and down it, it was pitch black and they were looking for a car.
Amy stopped and looked both ways along the beach. Shrugging she picked out a coin, "Heads that way, tails the other?" she offered.
Faith stared in either direction; then, speaking for the first time since her threats, chose one. "This way..."
"You can sense the cave?" Amy asked.
"Nah... but there's definitely something coming from that direction."
Roger stared at both women. "You think he went to the cave?"
"Unless him and Samson have both gone to get wrecked at Samson's place, I've run out of ideas."
"He could be..." Roger trailed off. There was simply nowhere for Xander to go. They'd been together since they arrived and they'd checked out everywhere they'd been previously apart from the cave. 'He can't know any more about this town than we do. But wait, he does know more about this town than we do... at least one more thing more anyway.'
"So we're agreed? We enter the cave again?"
"Dunno about we, chickette. But I'm going in."
"Xander's as much our resp..."
"No offence, but in the cave you two slow me down." Roger noticed Faith was starting to look around for something as she replied.
"We don't know where Xander might have gone." he quickly interrupted.
"What?" Both girls chorused.
"He may have been here before."
"What makes you think that?"
"Since when?"
"He obviously knows Samson from somewhere."
"Shit..."
"Hadn't thought of that. If he knows the area better than us, then he could be anywhere, depending on what he did last time we were here. That actually hinders us, rather than helps."
"Yeah, what she said."
"So... what do we do?" Roger asked.
Amy shrugged, "Guess best plan is to stick with the cave idea. If the jeep is parked outside it, then we go in. Else we go back to the hotel. No sense risking our lives on a possible goose chase."
"I'm with that. Apart from the we going in part."
Roger looked horrified. "If you go in, and Xander is in there. Then we have no fighters to defend us."
Faith quickly turned to look behind her, her sudden movement forced Roger to do the same. Not seeing anything, he glanced at Faith, who was acting like she hadn't done anything. "Not much defending been going on... but I see your point."
"So we all go in." Amy stated confidently.
"No... still just me. But if I'm not out by daylight, you leave the jeep outside the cave entrance. You contact Samson, and you contact Giles and get him to send some witches and some slayers down to you."
"So what are we supposed to do in the meantime? Just hang around the jeep til daylight?"
"Walk around the beach... try and find those invisible men that Samson mentioned."
"Talking of which." Came a voice from behind them.
Roger turned quickly and stumbled, tripping over his own feet.
"Hi." Came the smiling voice of Samson, offering Roger a hand back to his feet.
Faith was surveying the area. "One tent? Hardly a tribe, dude."
"That was the tent I was in. Came as a bit of a surprise when you three walked through the middle of it."
Amy looked at him suspiciously, "Thought you couldn't see us, when you're in the other dimensional plane."
"I said I didn't see you... Guess you didn't wander through the tent last time."
"Drove." Roger corrected.
"Well in that case, I'm definitely glad you didn't drive through the tent. If I hadn't known you couldn't touch us, I would have probably had a heart attack."
"We couldn't touch you?" This from Faith.
"You walked straight through the tent. I tried to attract your attention but Amy here, walked right through me."
"So that's it eh? You and some guys in a tent."
"No..." Samson replied easily. Gesturing to the tribesman, "There are more."
Slowly around them an entire village materialised. Warriors standing proud with weapons, women carrying babies, kids running around underfoot.
As Roger watched the scene, many of the tents began to fade again. Some of the people did too, others remained in view but seemed to be interacting with invisible objects. Sometimes the people faded and the objects remained; weapons and furs seemingly floating of their own accord.
Eventually all had faded, save the tribesman the tent that Samson had indicated he was in.
The tribesman made some gestures with his hand.
"They were asking about the wishes you made, and the trials you faced."
"We told you we did not find the demon." Amy replied, facing the tribesman knowing he couldn't understand her.
"Not yesterday... he's talking about tonight."
"What?" Faith asked, forcibly restraining herself from going over and grabbing the tribesman.
"Your jeep it is parked near the cave. You were aware of this were you not?"
"We were not." Roger replied. "We think Xander went in himself."
Amy was still over by the tribesman, "What language does he speak?"
"Pardon?" Samson said, shocked by the question.
"You said they told you about the demon... what language were they speaking?"
"Ermmmm..." Samson began, "It is an ancient dialect belonging to the Maasai."
Roger was confused, "The Maasai don't come this far down."
"Not anymore." Samson said, looking sadly at the tribesman.
"Look... can you just take us to Xander? Where the fucking hell is this cave again anyway."
Samson was staring directly at the tribesman, "There is no point."
"Just take us!!!" All three shouted together.
Samson led the way to the cave entrance. All four walked in silence, being followed by the tribesman.
Roger turned to confirm he was still there, as he did so the tent in the background faded from sight. 'Why doesn't he follow while invisible?' he pondered to himself.
As they approached the cave, they all seperated trying to get the cave to become three dimensional as quickly as possible. "Sunrise is in about half an hour," he warned everyone.
"Here it is." Amy called from somewhere to his right.
Heading in that direction, both him and Faith arrived at the same time. A lot of concentrating was done until it came into focus.
Faith was off like a shot.
"Wait!!" Amy called out.
"You two stay outside." She called back.
Amy looked at Roger, he could see the determination on her face. "Well we do have the torches..."
She beemed back at him, and they started towards the entrance.
Just before the entrance he grabbed her by the arm, "Remember if anything goes wrong, it was your idea."
"Sure." Amy said before strolling in.
Entering the cave, they'd decided not to turn the torches on until they'd gotten where it opened out. That way whatever effect light caused on the tunnel couldn't be blamed on them.
They'd gone barely fifty feet when they could hear breathing ahead of them.
'It's going to be a fucking bear or something.' Roger thought to himself. 'Dammit, forgot the gun again.'
He could feel Amy start to slow down, the sound of breathing getting to her as well, it seemed scarily close now.
They paused and looked at each other. There was still enough light to barely make each other out.
"Let's just do it." Amy whispered.
As one they turned their torches on.
To see Faith standing there, resting her hand on the end of the tunnel. A tunnel which shouldn't have stopped yet. Roger moved his torch around to get a better look. The tunnel had an end that looked entirely natural. It didn't look like a cave in, or that it'd been blocked.
It simply looked like the tunnel had never gone any further.
End chapter 6c:
A/N: Oh my god!!!! A chapter section that worked!!! The perfect timing to get me at a the cliffhanger I wanted. Instead of having to rush anything, all I had to figure was whether or not I showed the results of what happened when the torches got turned on. I like it when I have a choice of two cliffhangers that are a sentence or two apart... works so well.