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 12c:
Back in the cave
"She had no powers at all..?" Xande screamed in confusion.
"She had all the Slayer powers; enhanced strength, enhanced senses, resistance to injury, healing factor, faster reaction speeds, the works." Brouhm stated. "But she'd never been in a fight in her life. And the instincts weren't passed on."
"But... Buffy, Faith... hell, Vi practically lived up to her name as a shrinking violet but once she got a kick from the Slayer juice..."
"That's now, this was then." Brouhm stated.
Xander's mind flicked back to when that sentence had been uttered in the opposite order.
Brouhm explained further. "It turns out the Slayer's fighting skills didn't work the same way as their memory did."
"Talking of which, I've never heard any of them tell me about the life of the First Slayer. So either they've been lying to their Watchers for years or..." Xander drifted off as another possibility occurred to him. "You switched it, didn't you..? You switched it cos the skills were more useful than some memories. You switched it." He finished confidently.
Brouhm gave a single word response. "No."
"So now we were worried about the third Slayer." Brouhm continued with his tale. "Worried as to what that person would be like. Whether they would survive long enough for us to reach them."
"Oh god, please tell me you reached them." Xander pleaded, not wanting to hear of another girl just left to fend for herself.
"Unfortunately not," Brouhm answered the direct question. "But she did survive for almost a year by herself. We were so close."
"I'm going to be sick." Xander informed him.
"During that time, we tracked down the demon-tamers and explained the problem we were having. How the Warrior's immortality hadn't quite worked the way we expected, and how that was causing us difficulty in tracking her." Brouhm paused. "They were better at magic than ourselves, after much discussion we discovered we could track the Slayer using the power from within the Weapon. It gave us a general feeling of direction, and the power of that feeling increased as we drew closer. Least that was how Merkak described it to me."
"So why couldn't you get to her in time..?" Xander asked desperately.
"Travel in those days was far more troublesome than it is today." Brouhm responded. "Merkak travelled for months in the direction the Weapon indicated, but she was unable to travel fast enough to get there in time. We still don't know how far away she lived." Brouhm stated, reminding Xander of a phrase he'd heard repeatedly.
'The world's getting smaller.' He recited from memory, idly wondering how big it must have felt back then.
"We made it to the fourth one." Brouhm continued. "But even she'd been activated months before we got there. The area she'd lived in wasn't as heavily populated by the Unseen Threat as others were. And she knew the powers she had weren't that useful in dealing with any of the local Demon Lords. She'd been getting by, by using her prophetic dreams and informing some of the local magic users of what she'd seen."
"She was very glad to see Merkak and the Weapon." Brouhm informed him. "After discussions with some of the local magic users, far more powerful than any myself or Merkak had seen during our lives. They taught us a trick using the Weapon. One that proved invaluable."
"What..?" Xander asked, hoping that he would finally get good news.
"They showed us how the power within the Weapon would allow us to multiply Merkak's own magical abilities. They showed us how to teleport to the new Slayer."
"No fucking way." Xander said, "But there was never... we didn't have a... I mean... were you..?"
"We were." Brouhm responded.
"Well the Scythe was," Xander stated confidently. "Oh crap... the old woman Buffy mentioned." He paused staring at the man who'd been telling this tale. "Merkak died... I mean, there was a fight... and this guy called Caleb."
"Caleb." Brouhm responded.
Xander examined the other man, trying to get a read on how he was reacting to the name of a man who'd killed his great love. 'His answer seemed controlled... careful...' Xander realised, then wondered if he was even reading the man's emotions correctly. 'Maybe he just didn't join the dots.'
"Caleb killed Merkak." Xander tried again.
"I know." Came the unexpected response. "Don't worry about it though. She'll be back."
Unknown location
The teenaged boy grabbed Tu'ron forcing her to the ground. The wind knocked out of her slightly, Tu'ron quickly raised her legs so that she could rest his heavier weight on her knees.
'Scissor kick.' Faith silently instructed. 'Flick him off to buy yourself some time.'
Tu'ron struggled, unable remove her opponent from their superior position. She held tightly onto his neck keeping his head away from her own neck.
Pushing one of her thumbs into his neck, the boy coughed once, apparently distracted by the attack. She used this moment to roll him onto his back where she quickly straddled him.
'They don't breath, that wouldn't have worked at all.' Faith criticised, wishing she could add an eye roll to go with the comment. 'Telling you girlie, if you'd just acknowledge I'm here, I'll tell you more about vampires than you could ever imagine.'
Tu'ron drew a small rock from inside her belt and started prodding her opponent all over his arms and torso. "Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab." Tu'ron informed them. "Then axe to the neck." She finished proudly, as she stood up.
"Very good, Tu'ron." Came the voice of D'gan, the camp leader and also her adopted father. Beside him sat, Ga'nav who also nodded his approval.
Tu'ron beamed in response, and offered her downed opponent a hand up. Taking it, she tried to pull him to his feet. She had some strength but not quite enough to lift her adopted brother.
He was named Dig'na, and he was maybe sixteen as far as Faith could tell. Tu'ron was sporting a major crush on him, something Faith found eternally amusing.
Tu'ron had been adopted after her mother was slaughtered protecting her from a vampire. It had happened the same night that Faith had realised Tu'ron could sense them, not only did Tu'ron sense them in exactly the same way as Slayers did. Faith was pretty sure that Tu'ron was even more sensitive than they were.
Faith remembered the night well, they'd been sleeping comfortably in their beds when suddenly Tu'ron had felt it. An early warning system so refined that she'd been up and attempting to wake her mother before Faith herself had realised that it was happening now, and wasn't simply a memory as she'd first thought.
Her mother had been difficult to persuade to the reality, instead simply trying to soothe Tu'ron, believing it to be nothing more than a nightmare. Once the shadow had started moving around their tent, her mother took it seriously. Dragging them both outside, clutching desperately at a knife her mother had practically thrown Tu'ron in the direction of Bee'ka's tent, screaming at her to run and find Ga'nav.
Tu'ron had done so, but when Ga'nav and the others returned, she knew they'd been too late.
She'd stayed with Bee'ka's family for the first few nights, before D'gan had taken her in. Faith knew it was as much out of pride as any sort of sympathy. She was Tu'ron, 'the girl who could see the Unseen', as one of the vampires nicknames referred to them as.
She'd been moved up, considered too important to be used as any mere spotter. She was now instructed to be there whenever any hunting group returned, any stranger arrived or in fact anyone that came into the camp that hadn't been seen in over a day.
So far, none of the Unseen Threat had managed to slip past her, and as she got more experience in using her ability she got better at identifying the Threat. After almost five years of doing it she could now spot one of the Unseen in a small crowd from about fifteen paces.
Faith often tried to race the younger girl in identifying the vampire, after all they were both using the senses and information supplied from the same body. The fact that she had yet to win one and the other girl didn't even know she was competing often got to her.
D'gan and Ga'nav discussed the fight, pointing out places where each of the combatant could use some pointers.
Faith wanted to scream at times. Their entire battle strategy when numbers couldn't be relied on, was to continually stab the vampires with a knife, until it was injured enough for them to decapitate it. Unsurprisingly in Faith's opinion only the Braka were able to go one-on-one with a vampire.
Often when they were sparring like that, Faith was internally chanting, 'Go into town. Read a book, rent a movie.' Or running down a mental list of possible weapons. 'Sunlight. Holy water. Garlic can even slow them down if you get lucky. Set them on fire. For fuck's sake everyone knows about vampires and how a stake to the heart dusts them.'
That last one was the one that annoyed her most. 'The number of times, they've successfully stabbed it in the heart with a knife.'
Tu'ron was watching with interest, as Dig'na washed himself clean after their little match.
Part of Faith argued he was too young for her, another part of her argued Tu'ron was still way too young. But she was noticing that Tu'ron was stating to develop, and some of the boys nearer to her own age were starting to notice.
But there was that little selfish part of her, and it was when that part spoke up that Faith was glad she couldn't communicate with Tu'ron. The part that just screamed that it had been so long.
Shaking the thought off, she observed Tu'ron's not so subtle attempts to get Dig'na to notice her. Grinning, she made the silent promise to her host. 'If you ever get to hear my opinions... when you're old enough, I'll have him eating out of your hand for you.'
Back in the cave
"Is this some bad Arnie impression..?" Xander joked, before letting a little anger out. "She died. You could show some conce-"
"She has died many many times before." Brouhm informed him. "Something I don't think she planned when she inserted part of herself into the Weapon."
"Something she... what..?"
"We had got through many Slayers before we first discovered the problem." Brouhm informed him. "Merkak was barely over forty years old when she died."
Xander stopped to let that sink in. He wanted to ask a question, he thought he ought to be asking a question. But the truth of it was that he was simply lost.
"The Slayer at the time continued to carry the Weapon." Brouhm continued as if nothing had gone on.
'Your wife just died.' Xander wanted to scream.
"But then eventually as to be expected. She also died." Brouhm informed him without feeling. "Many Slayers came and went, all wondering what had happened to the Weapon and the Weapon's Guardian that they expected to join them."
"From all the memories of the previous Slayers..?" Xander asked.
"Yes." Brouhm replied with a smile. "The memories they received primarily belonged to the First Slayer, but they got quite a few details of the other lives too... and they knew one thing. The ones that Merkak hadn't managed to get to generally died quicker than the others did."
"I wasn't able to help them even if they could communicate with me." Brouhm responded. "The Weapon was lost when the Slayer holding it fell."
"So how did you... recruit another Guardian..?" Xander tactfully asked.
"I didn't." Brouhm answered. "I do not know what happened to the Weapon I resided in, just that one day I felt a power go through here. And then an unfamiliar voice spoke out."
"One of the Slayers managed to talk to you..?" Xander hypothesised.
"The voice was that of a young man. Sixteen maybe seventeen at most." Brouhm informed him, "He said only one word. And that word was my name."
Xander's eyebrows raised involuntarily. "What..?"
"The power was when he'd first touched the Weapon with his hand. Then it occurred." Brouhm stated confidently.
"What did..?"
Brouhm's response made little sense. "He received his full memories."
"Who did..?"
"I hadn't even known it was possible." Brouhm confessed. "The man told me about it later, he'd always had a inkling at the back of his mind that he didn't truly belong anywhere. And when he'd come of age he'd gone on a journey to find... something, he wasn't sure what."
"Who is this person..?" Xander asked again.
"After a long time searching, he'd eventually found it."
"What..?" Xander practically shouted at the other man.
"The Weapon... he'd been drawn to the Weapon from birth." Brouhm stated as though it had been obvious the whole time. "Said he'd always felt that a part of him was missing. Once he touched it, it all came back to him."
Xander refused to ask this time around, instead choosing to simply stand and stare. Hoping the other man picked up on it.
"It was Merkak."
This time he couldn't resist. "The man was Merkak..?"
"She'd put too much of her soul into the Weapon." Brouhm informed him. "As it was trapped in here with me, it couldn't move on. So she couldn't move on. She'd been forced to re-incarnate."
"What??????"
"This would happen many many times over coming years, when whoever Merkak was died, it'd be a certain amount of time before she could get back to me. Normally someone in their late teens or early twenties. Each time they returned, they joined with all their previous memories... even those that didn't make it to the Weapon."
"Why wouldn't they make it to the Weapon..?" Xander asked confused. "It sounds like they're got some sort of hollow bit inside them, that's pretty obsessed with it."
"The world was larger back then." Brouhm responded. "Some lands were impossible to traverse, some you couldn't even reach."
"So why was the Scythe there, then..?" Xander asked.
"The Weapon went wherever the Slayer was, least it did when some incarnation of Merkak could force it to do so. And Slayers tended to pop up wherever people did."
"Over several generations, we realised that this was a serious problem." Brouhm confessed. "There would be years, where Slayers were left to fend for themselves. And even though by this point they were fairing far better than those that came before. Each Slayer still had the simple hope that they weren't going to be one of the ones that help never arrived for."
"But what could you do..?" Xander asked. "Other than the reincarnation thing, Merkak was living a fairly ordinary life... lives." He corrected himself before moving on. "And you were stuck inside an inanimate weapon."
"We began to spread the word." Brouhm explained to him. "For each Slayer we visited, we explained it to the local population. Some had friends that were willing to help."
Xander smiled, imagining groups of people much like he'd been in, aiding the Slayer in her sacred duty. 'Hundreds of groups spread out over the planet, each-'
Unfortunately, Brouhm shook him out of his idealic visions with his next statement.
"Basically we laid the foundations for what would become the Watchers Council."
End chapter 12c