Chapter 6: Concourse – Pt. 2

A/N: For disclaimers, notes and warnings see Chapter 1.
Do bear in mind, A/N for Concourse Pt. 1 still apply.

Chapter 6: Concourse – Pt. 2

"Xander Lavelle Harris came back from Africa," XLH Harvey P. repeated. "Worse still, he settled on the Hellmouth. The Hellmouth is like the demon's Hollywood. Nothing that happens there goes unnoticed. The demons got the word before we did. We lost eight men the first day, three more the next and two more after that before we were finally able to reach every one and call them in."

He paused, then, looked down, chewed his lip, Giles was almost sure the emotion was genuine, but this is, he reminded himself a convention of con men.

"I don't think those men had easy deaths," Harvey went on. "We certainly never recovered any bodies. And no, we didn't try that hard. We were too busy running, moving everything, looking over our shoulders, expecting at any moment a horde of enraged demonic bartenders and shopkeepers to descend and take their vengeance. I don't think they ever came. I think the demons who realized they'd been fooled didn't want to admit it, others probably never realized he'd been in Africa all that time, all they knew was that now he was living on the Hellmouth, recovering from serious injuries.

"But we were sure they were coming for us. We moved lock stock and barrel to sunny sunny Phoenix and we waited. And waited. One by one people began to slip away, moving on to new cons, or slipping gratefully back into the workaday nine to five demon free grind.

"Three months after his return there was only about twenty of us left. True believers, if you will. Some of us stayed because we had come too close to the brass ring, and we just couldn't let go. Some of us stayed because, hell, we had no where else to go. And some of us stayed because being Xander Harris had become our lives. It was what made us … different. Special.

"Most of us stayed for all of the above. And there was another thing." Harvey P. paused, leaned forward, spoke directly to someone in the audience, said, "Robert, you'll have your turn, I guess you know where I stand, but I am going to try to keep this as neutral as I can, but this is part of the history…."

"It's okay, Harv," a man answered, "I'll wait my turn."

"I mentioned earlier, we studied the life of Xander Harris. And some of us began to feel a little ashamed. To be fair, that only happened after the money was coming in, you could say we had a case of luxury conscience, and there is some truth in that. Also that, well, we finally had time to sit back and think…

"But the feeling was genuine. We liked to tell ourselves that it wasn't just the money, that anything that was bad for demons had to be a blow struck for Good-with-a-capital-G, right? But we knew… we didn't go after the big clans, or the master vamps. We hit the small fry, the relatively harmless. And mostly we just annoyed them. Xander Harris, demon fighter, very cool. Harvey P., demon irritation specialist. Not gonna be one of the really hot trading cards anytime soon.

"We wanted to do better. But what? We had a decent war chest, we had a pretty good demon database, what the hell were we gonna do with it? Of course, while we all sat on our thumbs and studied our navels, Walt Peckham was the one who came up with the next plan of action. Walt Peckham who saw the obvious.

"Who were the demons really afraid of?"

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These women, F. Charity Wigglesworth decided, were insane and some of them, the ones who had actually ventured into the demons' domain, were damn lucky to be alive. They had guts, though, she'd give them that. She could almost forgive them for making her out to be a slut of low standards. Almost.

She had been put off at first by the self-appointed fencing instructor's know-it-all manner, and had come thisclose to teaching the silly cow a lesson. But she'd realized that at least the woman was trying. She had learned some things and she was trying to pass them on and didn't deserve to be humiliated by someone with genuine superpowers. F. Charity had backed off and spent the rest of the sparring session guiding her partners gently in the direction of at least not cutting their own heads off.

Most of the women had gone to shower, but F. Charity had not come close to breaking a sweat, so she skipped the ablutions, and found herself drawn to the daycare center again. She stood, leaning against the doorjam, watching the children play.

"Which one's yours?" said a voice beside her and she turned, saw the tall brunette who seemed to run the place.

"None," F. Charity answered, "just thinking about it."

"Ah, thinking first, wow," the woman said, "people really do that? I'd heard that, but wow, to see it really happening, amazing."

F. Charity glanced sharply at the woman, but decided she meant no offense. "Do you have kids?" she asked.

"Yes, a daughter, Rory. She's going to Harvard next year. Or possibly Yale."

"You must be proud."

"Oh yeah. You could tell, huh? For what it's worth, if I'd been thinking on a certain balcony many years ago I wouldn't have her, and she's the best thing that ever happened to me."

"I'm more worried I wouldn't be good for her. Or him. My mom…. Wasn't the best mom ever, yeah?"

"You should meet my mother, the wicked witch of Hartford."

"Your mom's a witch? Cool."

"What? Oh no, not a Witch witch. I mean, she wouldn't be caught dead touching a broomstick for one thing, and having a cat in the house would be totally out of the question and if the devil ever showed up at midnight and demanded that she worship him she'd just make him wipe his feet and tell him to come back at a decent hour in the morning. No, she's just a graduate of the Stepford School of Soul Destruction, with an advanced degree in Daughter Mortification…. What was your mom like?"

"Oh she…. just wasn't around very much."

"Well, I'll say this much for my mother, she taught me all kinds of things not to do with my daughter. I'm not saying I never made any mistakes, or that there's nothing I regret, but I am a very good mother and my kid turned out just fine. I mean I know they say we all grow up to be our mothers… well, I say we don't have to if we don't wanna or we'd all still be… Donna Reed or June Cleaver or something. "

F. Charity laughed, "Well, one thing I ain't worried about is turning into June Cleaver. If I got a kid one thing I'm gonna teach'em, any one calling them shit like 'The Beaver' gets their ass kicked, pronto."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Harvey P. nodded and a new slide came up showing a large, very muscular black woman wearing black leather jeans, black tank top and brandishing a sword.

"Michael 'Michelle' Carmichael," Harvey said. "Our first 'Faith.' Michelle was a pre-op transsexual that Walt had arrested for prostitution a couple times in Tacoma. We may have taken the phrase 'dark slayer' a bit too literally. But we had no real picture of Faith at the time. Sure, there were the cartoon images of the hot girl with big tits on the RPG site, which we all enjoyed. But we didn't really believe them. After all, as I understand it, the real Lady Croft is a leather-faced old broad who stands five foot nothing in her habitual black gumboots, generally wears a rumpled old mac and her most prominent physical feature is her two front teeth, but that's not what you see on the net. This, in our heart of hearts, is what we figured a real Slayer looked like… Of course we've since learned better, but if we knew then what we know now…" He shrugged, shook his head.

"In our defense, we warned her. Several times, over and over. Even Walt warned her. But Michelle wanted to get off the streets, she wanted the money, she had the moves with the sword and she had the attitude. May she rest in peace...

"Walt went a little mad. We'd learned by then about Harris' limp, the same leg as Walt's. In the interest of consistency most of us had been mimicking Walt's limp whenever we took on the Harris' role, so we all still matched. We learned of the scars on Harris abdomen, Walt of course had scars there as well and made much of the fact that he had had the limp and the scars before Harris did. For Walt they were clearly stigmata. He had been marked. Chosen."

Harvey paused, "I'm talking to you calmly now, more or less, I think, reasonably. But those were not calm and reasonable times. Walt was our leader. Everyone who had a life elsewhere had already left. More than anything we feared the cubicle purgatory that awaited us if we failed." He nodded, another largish woman in black leather appeared on the screen.

"Naomi was all woman," Harvey said. "All heart. May she rest in peace." He nodded. The next woman was tall as well, but slimmer, athletic. "Farrah is, as far as I know, still alive." Harvey said. "And as far as I know, she's still running." He nodded. Another girl in black leather, shorter, sturdy.

"Bonnie. May she rest in peace. We didn't understand that demons are like humans. What they fear is the unknown. Even now, I understand, if a Slayer walks into a bar there will almost always be at least one demon who will challenge her. The girl in front of them just isn't as frightening as the idea of The Slayer. No demon wants to be the one to bring Buffy or Faith into the local safe haven. But once they are already there…

"Bonnie was the end. We may have been stupid. But we weren't crazy. We weren't sending any more girls to their deaths, not even for Walt. So Walt had a new idea. If pretending to be demon hunters didn't work, well then we'd have to become the real thing. We fought, we argued, we wet our pants. But in the end we agreed. We sacked up. We got our weapons, we made our plans, we picked out a demon bar in Flagstaff Arizona, we picked a day and a time."

Harvey stopped, walked to the front of the stage, glared out at his audience.

"I've heard the stories, don't think I haven't," he spit out. "They're not true. We were there. I was there, in place, at midnight, just as we agreed. And I'm telling you no one reset Walt's watch. No one changed the meeting time. I have no idea why Walt went in early, but it was some reason of his own. Bravado. Perhaps in the end he couldn't bear to lead us to what probably would have been our deaths, and went alone instead. To save us. That is what I prefer to believe…But what I know is that we were there, in the alley, waiting for the signal to attack…. And a demon came out and began throwing Walt at us. An arm. A foot. His ribs. His head...

"What can I say? We ran like hell." Harvey turned, retreated behind his podium, drank some water.

"So then it was over. Almost. We had three more months on our office lease. We were arguing about whether to split the remaining money or try to start up some sort of ordinary business. And then a miracle happened. Two miracles.

"First, Faith showed up in Cleveland, hooked up with Harris and they began their travels."

"The second miracle was Ms. Sarah Padlewski, known to you all now, of course, as F. Sarah B."

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"You want what?" F. Alba said.

"A lock of her hair," F. Kaitlyn G. answered. "Willow asked me to get it if I had a chance, we need to run a couple tests 'cause there's really something wrong with her aura. I was thinking we could get your sister to talk to her, you know the way she does….?"

"Yeah, I know."

"Right, so when the manager starts getting that really glazed look I thought you and I could come running up and sort of bump into each other and I would get entangled in her hair…" Kaitlyn held up a hand carrying four large silver rings, each depicting an open mouthed animal, wolf, dragon etc. "And then we'll take Buffy away and she'll be so grateful she won't think twice about the hair thing."

"Okay, we can do that," F. Alba said and went off to find her sister, "Hey B…..Anne," she said when she found her grilling the woman who'd led the Faiths' second session, 'Skintight with Comfort: Leather Care' "we need your help for a moment."

"Who's we?"

"Me an' Kaitlyn. We need to run a little scam thing, and we need you to do the talking."

"Again? You're the one who's so good with languages, how come you always want me to do the talking? You know I suck at undercover."

"We don't need to you be undercover, we just need you to be yourself. Just go up and ask the manager lady…. About that town meeting thing she put on the wall there. Just keep talking until we come and get you."

"Okay, just don't be too long. Last time you left me talking to that newsstand guy on the via Malatesta for twenty minutes and now every time he sees me he hides under the counter."

"Well, the chances of a really cute guy coming by on a scooter here are really really slim, so I think you're safe."

"Better be."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"What can I say about F. Sarah B.," Harvey P. said with a slightly wistful smile. "That won't have Joe B. up here punching me out, I mean," he added. "You've all seen her, you know she's beautiful, I expect you all know she was an Olympic caliber gymnast before she injured her knee, you all know how full of energy she is, how full of life…."

"Well imagine a bunch of sad sack guys sitting around a half empty office, avoiding each other's eyes and contemplating their future in the widget counting industry, when we hear the sound of a motorcycle pulling right up to the front door. And we go out and there is our own Joe B. on this bad ass Hog. With this amazing girl all in the black leather. She does a backflip off the back of the bike, does a couple front flips ending in split right in front of us, she does a front roll and comes up pulling a sword out of a scabbard on her back and takes a swing I swear leaves a tiny little mark on Derrin's belt buckle. Just for a moment there, one wonderful moment, we all had that little surge of excitement…. We thought we had a real Slayer…

Then Joe says, "'Meet our new Faith.'"

And at first we were all against it. We were all, 'c'mere baby, that guys gonna get you killed, you come home with me, I'll take care of you.' But she wasn't having any. Joe had told her the whole thing. And he had a new plan.

"We tried it out in Albuquerque. First thing we did, we made sure Harris and Faith weren't in Cleveland. Then Joe and Sarah went into a bar down on Central where we knew vamps liked to pass and hang out with the happy meals. Joe and Sarah went in, they drank and danced for awhile, let themselves be seen. Then I went in, acted like I was a bit drunk and got handsy with her and she backhands me." Harvey P. grinned. "So I do this back flip. It was, if I say so myself, one of my finer moments. I nailed that sucker. Ass over teakettle halfway across the room. Then Ed. G. and Derrin M. and a couple other guys leap up and attack her and of course make it look like she's just slapping us around like flies. Then she and Joe walk out of that bar like they're bored stiff.

"The next day Joe goes into a demon bar on Fifth by himself, and comes back out with two grand and the win-place-show results for the next six races at the Downs….

"And the rest, as they say is history. We expanded again. But slowly. We set up a warning system, a 24 hour hotline with the latest info on Harris and Faith. We made sure we always had two or three informants in Cleveland. We did our best to keep track of their travels… We didn't always know where they were…. But we found that if we didn't know, the demons probably didn't know either.

"Whenever possible we took information instead of cash as pay-offs. We bought into businesses, traded stocks, bet on the horses. We trained new Xander's and Faith's, we sold franchises…… And you guys know all this stuff, right? You cash your checks, you read your annual reports. Two years and retire, right, guys? Anybody got any complaints about the money?" He stared out into the room. "Didn't think so."

"And there is the other side of the coin now. We'd learned our lesson in Flagstaff. We aren't demon fighters. But we can still act in the spirit of Xander Lavelle Harris." He nodded and a new slide came up, showing a bunch of guys in eye-patches and Hawaiian shirts standing around a giant cardboard check with a lot of zeroes on it. "The XLH Foundation for the Victim's of Violence has offices in twelve countries. We fund orphanages. We purchase prosthetic limbs and fund the necessary physical therapy. We provide scholarships. Small business loans. We try to give priority to the victims of demons, but we certainly do not limit it. If a child has lost parents, a women her husband, a man his wife… whether to a hungry vampire or a forgotten land mine doesn't matter…. In this country we donate extensively to existing homeless shelters and directly fund the Faith in the Darkness Safehouses for Abused Children in sixteen major cities."

"When I lay awake at night and think of the dead, when I think of F. Bonnie's wide grin, or of poor Walt Peckham's head rolling to a stop at my feet, the XLH Foundation is what lets me sleep…

"Gentlemen I thank you for your attention. There have been several turning points in our brief history. I believe this meeting is another. I simply ask you to remember where all this started. With an ordinary young man in a small California town who found himself suddenly faced with the forces of darkness and responded with selfless courage and dedication. Ask yourself, when the day is done, if by some miracle you were given the chance to meet the Man Himself, would you be able to look him in the eye?"

Joseph B. took the stage as Harvey P. left to solid if not over-excited applause.

"Thank you, Harvey," he said. "Gentlemen, let's take fifteen.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Giles first had to take care of the biological functions caused by an excess of tea with breakfast, then he went searching. He found him behind the boathouse, tossing pebbles in the water and watching the tiny ripples disappear.

"It's nothing to do with you, really," Giles' said. "You do understand that? If they really knew the first thing about the real you they would have never sent those girls to die."

"Yeah, maybe," Xander said. "It's still… freaky. In Vegas I just thought they were some bunch of…. harmless idiots. I figured on other week-ends they went to Renfaires and trekkie conventions. Instead I find out I came back to Cleveland and as a result thirteen people died."

"If you even try to feel guilty about that I'll have Willow turn you into a toad for the rest of the week-end."

"Weird, isn't it?"

"Which?"

"Frogs freak her the hell out but she's cool with toads. Must be a witch thing. We're thinking of settling down some. Me an' Faith. We'd still, you know, do some travelling, check in on the houses. Just maybe from like a steady base. A house even."

"Well, it's about time," Giles said. "You decided where yet?"

"I think we're agreed on warm. Beyond that it's kind up in the air. I suppose that would kinda put these guys out of business, wouldn't it? You think they really give a lot of money to those kids?"

"I'll have a couple of the lads check into it. And then I want to find out just how these gentlemen managed to avoid appearing our radar before this. But if you if you let that be any part of your decision, I won't just have Willow turn you into a toad, I'll have her give Faith a spell so she can do the transformation at will. Understood? Now let's get back. I'm particularly anxious to hear the presentation on What The Man Himself Would Say, aren't you?"

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In the boathouse Definitely-Not-XLH Jules Verne, thirteen year-old son of XLH Renee V. turned and looked at his two companions, then down at the pipe he hadn't even lit yet. Then back at his companions.

"You guys hear that?"

"Yeah, but…. No way."

"But you heard it right?"

"Oh yeah."

"My Dad would freak."

"Your Dad would freak? My mom would lose what's left of her fucking mind."

"They'd never believe us anyway. I don't even believe it and I heard it. Someone's just playing a joke on us."

"Maybe. But we gotta check it out, right?"

"You think, if that was really him, you think that means…."

"Faith's here?" they said in unison. "Yeah. We gotta check it out. Right after this bowl."

"Fuck that. We can smoke anytime. We gotta stay sharp if we're gonna get a picture of a real Slayer. Especially the Dark Slayer."

"Wait, how are we gonna know which one is her?"

"Easy, doofus. She'll be the winner of the lookalike contest."

-30-