Chapter 6: First Impressions

Buffy told me she couldn't stay— there was a training session that needed her attention— but she promised to send up someone who could show me a room. She had left then, giving me a small smile over her shoulder as she passed through the door.

Alone. Not a sound.

Is this it? Am I being watched? Am I free? Could I be free? Can I run?

I couldn't see outside the windows— a grey, erasable fog clouding the glass. What's the worse I could land on? A few cuts and bruises, granted, but nothing I wouldn't eventually heal from. I pressed a hand to the glass. I was in Oregon, several states away from where I thought I would be and in a time period ahead of where I expected to be. They had mentioned nothing about Ani, nor hinted towards it. They acted as if they didn't know I had really killed someone, or were truly unaware. In case of the latter, I intended to keep it that way. And in either case, were they insane or was some psychopath really trying to kill me and I had only escaped by luck? I had seen enough Saturday morning cartoons to know that bad guys unfortunately don't give up after you've thwarted their plans to kill you. They only got pissed, really pissed. But this was real life, and the bad guys usually didn't intend to put you on a conveyer belt, then leave the room and you to your doom. They would follow you, capture and torture you and only when were you begging for death did they give it to you. In some cases, they couldn't be beaten.

My hand fell away from the glass.

I needed to be around people who had a chance of survival when "couldn't" seemed to be all that was possible.

"Are you Reid?" A voice from behind me asked. I spun and saw a dark haired girl holding a slip of paper. Her dark eyes sized me down and she straightened up.

"Are you Kennedy?" I asked, the name Buffy had mentioned in passing flickering to the surface of my memory. Her eyes narrowed and a jaunty wrist snapped to her hip. It was like brushing cats the wrong way with a brush: we were one-step away from relinquishing claws.

"Uh-uh. Now come on."

The girl turned and for the first time in my awake consciousness, I stepped out of the hospital ward. Now, we stood inside of a hall. Cream-colored walls lined this new hall and the odd windows flecked equally along the walls. The floor was now a dark wood, opposed to the hard linoleum. The hall jerked right and left at the very end, leaving three doors. Kennedy strode through the middle door, the one with the biggest brass handle of the three. A stone arch bowed in front of us, with a black metal staircase swirling up and down a few feet passed the stone arch. Kennedy swiftly stepped up the stairs and for all my staring, I had to take a couple of long, fast strides to catch up with her. The ceiling passed by and at the top, a balcony with two short flights of stairs leaked down both sides. Again, there was a long skinny hallway at the floor below. Kennedy took the right one, I following at her heels and then I was immediately hit by a sonic blast of sound. Laughing, music, squealing and several loud bumps were echoing around the hallway. Sound was trying to escape through the door cracks but there was so much of it, it was caught under the doorways and when one was opened slightly, the noise was released in an eardrum-blasting wave.

Suddenly, one of the doors was flung wide-open and a tall skinny girl, not much older than fifteen, tumbled out, giggling like mad. A huge pink pillow followed her out and she ducked, laughing even harder. What sounded like a gaggle of girls sat just beyond the door and they were laughing as well.

"Missed, stupid!" She called back into the room. "Lemme see some of that Slayer power!"

She cackled madly before chucking the pillow back into the room. It looked as though she was about to jump back into the fray, but then she stopped and frowned. Slowly, her head turned to look at Kennedy striding towards her. The girl cringed for a moment, but as Kennedy walked on, she relaxed. She watched the older girl go, before turning around and frowning. She heard my footsteps and when she glanced up, a pointed jaw dropped and she rushed back into the room, any thoughts of continuing the fight clearly gone.

I glared at the door and then took one step forward. And then another. I started walking firmly down the hall as one by one the wooden doors opened. Girls ranging from thirteen to my age poked their heads outside their doors to watch me walk down the hall. A soft buzz began to echo behind me, the girls turning to their neighbor to ask what they thought of the new girl. I stuck a defiant chin into the air, my back arching with confidence. If they stared, I would give them what they wanted to see, but even then, I could not help but wonder, did they know?

Kennedy led me down through another hallway and up another flight of metal staircases and through another stone arch before opening a wooden door. All the walls were cream colored, the previous hallways occasionally switching between cream and dark green wallpaper.

"What was that place back there?" I asked, the feeling of being bored slowly replacing the awe at the sheer size of this place.

"Oh, that. That was Housing Section A. You're in Section D."

The bored-me stirred slightly as I considered something.

"There must have been at least forty girls in there. So, if my math isn't completely screwed up, there are at least eighty girls here."

"Seventy-eight actually, including you," Kennedy said, with a grin. "Some of the rooms aren't filled yet and we haven't had to double bunk everyone. And even then, the whole organization system is really weird. Some bizzaro scheme thought up by Buffy."

We stopped at one door, one in a long hall with dark wallpaper. Number 314 hung by nail on the wooden door, the door itself innocently blank of all scratches and imperfections.

"Reid, meet your new roommate," Kennedy said and pushed a door inward, showing a short girl with blonde hair, with a blue stripe down the middle, pulled back in a plait. She was folding a shirt when we came in.

"Hi, I'm Ericka," the girl said and outstretched a hand. Ericka had a round face with soft blue, unwavering eyes. It screamed innocence but something about the warm eyes set of a scowl.

"I have a roommate?" I asked of Kennedy, ignoring the girl's open hand. "I thought you said not everyone had to be double bunked."

"You're not everyone," Kennedy said, in a tone that firmly stated, "This is as far as you go."

Kennedy turned towards the door before giving Ericka an apologetic glance. Ericka attempted to do a hidden shrug and returned to her folding. Kennedy left, leaving me alone with my new playmate.

There stood two beds. The right half of the room had a new brightly colored top sheet, matching pillows and a picture of Ericka and a little boy who bore a close family resemblance to her, sat on the nightstand. The dresser had a mirror, the top shelf holding only one plastic bag of makeup and the rest of the shelf spotted with scraps of paper that looked like movie ticket stubs and torn out papers from magazine. At least I didn't get melodramatic Barbie.

"Sorry, if I have too much stuff," Ericka finally said. She was readjusting clothes from her bed to the drawer. "But you have your own."

I turned and looked at my half of the room. Spartan, came to mind. The top cover of the bed was grey and the sheets were white beneath. The lamp beside the bed covered over blank desk and the chest of drawers held a mirror that reflected the personality explosion on the opposite side of the room. I flopped down on my bed and let my mind drift.

There were several things I knew, didn't know and wanted to know. I knew that the cops hadn't found me. Instead, I had been captured by a group of females with superpowers known as Slayers. I have yet to see such power, but the talking furniture and the glowing girl was hard to ignore.

"So did you get here today?" Ericka asked.

"Nope. Been here for three weeks, in the infirmary." I said.

"Three weeks?" Ericka paused from her folding and looked at me, a well-played look of feigned shock written all over her face.

"Yeah, fell out of my bed back in Manhattan." I muttered, a lie flicking off my tongue, a bad one as it may be.

Ericka nodded, frowning slightly as though she could not comprehend why someone would lie. That would soon go away and she would learn that this was just the way I was, especially if she was my roommate.

"Weird, I know."

My small bag of clothes had been brought up. I unzipped the bag and started to rummage through. There were some jeans, shorts, tank tops, regular shirts and a few undies. I pulled them out in stacks, and began to move towards the dresser.

"You should probably burn those. They don't do much good here."

I stopped and looked over at her, a regular bra in my hands. "This?"

Ericka nodded as she put several sports bras into her drawer.

"You'll figure out sooner or later that jeans, sneakers, a sports bra and a t-shirt is all a Slayer has time for."

"Between what?" I snickered. "Beheading and breakfast?"

"Yes." Ericka said firmly. She was completely serious, but there was a flash of spiteful undertone; she was already fed up with my mood.

"Well, in any case, some sleep is dually needed before any thing that involves beheading." I kicked off my boots and tumbled backwards onto my bed.

"Oh, no, no. It's dinnertime. Come on, it's a good place to make an impression."

"Already met the gang this morning. That Xander really likes his crossbow." I sighed and pulled a magazine over from her side of the room, flipping through it nonchalantly. "I'm not going."

There was little malice in that, but just enough to get the point across.

Ericka frowned. "Um . . . Ok. Well, aren't you hungry? If you want, I could—"

"No," I said firmly. If she thought something was off about my arrival here, certainly everyone else would feel the same. The walk through Section A earlier today had proven that well enough. "I'm going to stay here and unpack."

"Alright."

And she left through the door.

She was going off to tell all her buddies what a bitch the new girl was. I didn't care. Let her.

Ericka came back late. I don't know the exact time but even after the room was filled with her deep shallow breaths, I didn't follow her into sleep. In fact, I did not sleep the entire night. From my cradled position facing the wall, I watched the sky's reflection in the mirror. At first, a crisp line of gold pink and above it a settling black, like a blanket waiting to be thrown over a candle. Then, as the night moved on, the sky was smudged with a sparking dust of stars, lightening the black for a couple of hours. For a few hours after that, a pure white orb lit up the sky, outshining the glimmering stars: the moon was ruling the sky. Though the sky shifted, it felt as though the moon never moved. Then, the moon was gone and a curious pink opened at the horizon and with more light, the horizon grew stronger and the night fell away. It was then Ericka shifted and crawled out of bed. She got dressed and left.

I turned over and sighed. For a moment I closed my eyes, and then there was a knock at the door. It was Ericka, with breakfast. The room was filled with the glow of early morning.

She slid a biscuit onto the bedside table.

"Since you didn't eat last night, I thought—"

"Yeah, thanks." The gesture was forced: she was probably making nice, only because that was how she was raised, not because it was what she wanted.

"I'm sure you could care less, but classes start today."

"I dropped out of school so I would never hear that phrase again."

"What?"

"Nothing."

It was stupid to try and avoid the inevitable. I slipped out from the sheets and randomly pulled clothes from my drawer, changed quickly and shrugged at Ericka.

"How bad can it be?"

We left Section D, leaving from a different hallway than Kennedy brought me down yesterday. The thin corridor spilled out into a wide room with many doors and hallways branching off. Four arches faced us from the wall across. They were empty and blank, dark brick hiding in the shadows. An elevator-shaft came to mind but as we moved forward into the room, the small black thin metal staircase that seemed to be the favored method of floor travel appeared from inside the seemingly empty doorways. Ericka trotted down, not even pausing to make sure I was following.

After going through the dark shaft and having the feeling of slipping down an eternally long black waterslide grate on the inside of my stomach, Ericka brought us into a large room. It looked similar to a mountainside lodge, with the walls reinforced by stone pillars and the large ceiling supported by wooden timbers. A massive paired door stood across from us on the opposite wall. Intricate designs were carved into the wood and something told me that the artwork wasn't just simply that; the doors seemed to crackle, though they remained perfectly still. Though this was an insanely impossible idea, I wondered if there was something else reinforcing the door besides locks and bolts. The floors were hard wood, and the doors looked oak. Framed doorways led off into separate hallways and a whiff of rosemary that left a set of opened pairs doors to my left led me to believe that was where they called the kitchen.

Every few minutes, a girl or a pair would dash across the foyer and disappear into one of the adjacent hallways. Maybe it would be a group, laughing and talking, traveling around.

Hello, Professor Xavier School for the purely female gifted.

We entered into a far hall, opened a door and came to a small college-like room. Large wooden connected desks wrapped around the wall closest to the door and had four moveable chalkboards were mounted on the across wall. A desk sat in the front and on either side of the desk stood a rack of weapons. From swords and small metal things that looked like Ninja Stars, to curved fierce-looking knives, they all sat there, just as normally as an apple would sit on a teacher's desk in elementary school.

Ericka slid into the first row and I immediately tensed. Never once in all my years of school had I ever sat in the very first row. There was something about the openness that accompanied a seat in the front row: if a teacher called on you, there was no mistaking those cold eyes glaring at only you for the answer. You couldn't slip away and hide in the crowd: you were going to respond to the question, whether the answer was wrong or right, locked to your seat by a gripping silence.

I slipped into the seat behind Ericka. She frowned for a moment, but she shrugged as I gave her a firm smile.

Fortunately, we weren't the only ones there. A few others were already speckling the seats, and as time passed, more and more girls came to fill in the seats. They were talking and laughing, acting as though this was an all girls' boarding school, not a place where they learned to hone their superpowers.

A white door on the sidewall opened and all those who were standing and talking, sat and were silent.

A man with short clipped grey hair and a silver goatee, that swirled out like white branches stepped into the room, a clipboard and paper in his hand. He had steely eyes and a hard shape to his chin. He swirled more than walked and finally, after several crisp tapings of heels clicking to the ground, he stopped and faced us.

"My name is Evan Tremaine." He surveyed his class with a glare, not unkindly but not full of brilliant warmth either. He was the teacher and we were the students; that was the way he believed it to be. We were expected to follow. Holding in a groan, I slumped down the seat. He was going to be just like the rest of them.

"The only reason I say this," he continued, "is due to our new student."

A smooth hand gestured towards me and I wished desperately for my seat to give way and I would fall into the center of the earth.

"Your name?"

The class turned to look. Every eye was waiting for my answer and even though I had escaped the first row I was still compelled to say the answer. Stupidly, I thought that I could blend in, that no one would notice the "new girl."

"Reid." I said, sitting up to my full height. They had noticed me. Nothing to do about that now. "Reid Robinson."

There was a breadth of silence before a soft wind of whispers swept around the room. What did she know? What could she do? Where was she from? Who was she?

Tremaine silenced the class with one shift of his gaze to each person in the room. Again, this was not cruel, just simply authoritative.

"Now, you might be slightly behind," he said, his gaze sliding back to me. "And I would be happy to help you catch up. But later."

I nodded, my dry throat making my tongue swell. Tremaine nodded curtly, spun on his brown heel and went to one of the boards. He pulled on one of the strings and a poster of a thing made of dark orange scales with a crown of black horns spiking out of its head slipped down into view.

"Starting off where we left, can anyone tell me what this is?"

A tiny brunette raised her hand, a hideous wave of superiority rolling off her. I twisted in my seat to put the farthest amount of space between us. Fingers crossed that a demon eats her first.

"That's a Gre'tal demon," the brunette squeaked gleefully.

Tremaine nodded and began to point out all the vital organs of the demon, occasionally quizzing us about the names and the functions of each. The brunette raised her hand for each, but thankfully Tremaine called on others. We then moved on to a gnoll's language, before Tremaine glanced at his watch and waved us out. I waited, and as expected, he handed me a green folder and a highlighter. He nodded and before left the room, there was a shimmer of curiosity in his blue-grey eyes. I began flipping through the packet and watching Ericka through the corner of my eye, I followed her.

Inside the green packet, there were pictures and pages of slimy things, suckerfaced things, purple lizards with shark heads and most interestingly about a stack of information on vampires. How to kill vampires, where to find vampires, feeding habits and pack hunting grounds: it was all in here. There was even a complete diagram of the jaw structure of a vampire, from the deadly incisors connecting a valve underneath the nasal cavity leading out into the pharynx and into the throat. So blood really did run into a vampire's throat . . .

"Hey, wake up. Next class."

"What?" I slammed the folder closed to see Ericka grinning that knowing smile.

"Last class and I think you'll like this."

"That was just fifty minutes, and there's only one more class of the day?" I asked in disbelief. Maybe I could get used to this.

"Yeah, rest of the day usually is spent on demon-rounds."

"Demon rounds?"

Ericka nodded and pushed open a double metal door. I had been so absorbed by the packet, the journey down here had completely passed me by. How to get back to the dorm, I hadn't the faintest idea.

"Teams go out in rounds and go either across the country, or even the world to check out or maybe take out any demon activity. The more experienced girls get to go to Romania and the new ones usually just go somewhere around the state."

"Teams?"

We walked through a long stone hallway and every few feet on the wall were spotted with double doors with two round holes. I couldn't see through them, as we were moving too fast to get a decent look, but there was definite movement beyond the glass. There were also sounds, strange sounds. If I had to place them, they could come from some sort of martial arts movie. There were shouts, female shouts, but not of pain, or anger, just power. And occasionally, there was a crack of wood hitting wood, or metal hitting wood. These were quiet sounds, as though away in a large distance. But they were there.

"Yep. You might be in mine, because you're my roommate, but I can't guarantee anything."

"Yipee," I muttered as we passed a door labeled Weaponry. Ericka didn't seem to hear my previous remark, so I continued on. "What's in there?"

Ericka turned to see me jerk a thumb over my shoulder. "That, is just what it says. It holds the swords and stakes and crossbows. The staves and maces and the numchucks, they're all in there. Before a mission, we go in there and grab what we want. I like me a good solid stake."

I repressed a snort. It was like Van Helsing had been cloned into hundreds of monster hunters, and of course, minus the leathery coat and beard . . . and you know, other parts.

"You're lucky you came when you did," Ericka said over her shoulder as the hallways became thinner. "We rotate training rooms and this happened to be my week we go in the big gym."

"Is there a bright pink neon scoreboard?" I muttered, the sentence verging on being unheard. But Ericka did catch what I said.

"Bright pink? I don't think so. But scoreboard, yes."

That faltered my smirk for a moment.

"Are you serious?"

We had stopped outside another set of double doors but these were painted a scarlet red. Ericka stopped with a hand on the handle to look at me, grinning slightly.

"Every word. The scoreboard is the amount of bruises you get from someone else and how many you give to them."

With that, she opened the door and stepped inside. I followed, immediately ignoring the goose bumps that were suddenly livid over my skin.

This room, at one time, might have been a high school gym. It was certainly large enough, except there were no bleachers and no logo painted on the floor. Instead, large blue mats covered the wood floor and weapons of every sort imaginable were set inside of a large continuous metal cage, stretching from the far end corner of the room to the other side. A half circle of girls sat in the very center mat, talking and stretching. They all wore running shoes and sweatpants, even the occasional jumper.

"Yoga time?"

"No, it's just the most comfortable clothes to wear." Ericka then glanced to my jeans, corduroy jacket, and thick black boots. "Yeah, lose the jacket and boots. It'll hurt."

"What will hurt?" I asked grudgingly and removed the outer layer of clothing.

"When you fall on your ass." Ericka chuckled. We sat down in the outer end of the half circle. A pretty Asian girl slid next to Ericka, smiling with beautifully white teeth.

"Hey, how's the side?" She asked Ericka, dark eyes sliding to Ericka's hip.

"Better. I'm off the greenroot stuff the wiccans had been giving me. Now its just patches o' gauze for me."

"Good, 'cus you totally missed out on Greenwich. Major demon-slayage. Oh, hi, sorry, I'm Yuri." The Asian said to me and extended a hand. For a moment I hesitated, then grasped the thin hand momentarily.

"Reid."

"So how long have you been here?"

I looked at her, something snarky about being unconscious for three weeks on the tip of my tongue. Instead:

"A day and a half."

"What do you think of this place? Amazing, right? I mean we're practically superheroes!"

"Amazing, I don't know. Beyond freaky, that sounds about right."

Yuri laughed. "Yeah, it's totally insane your first few weeks. But this, this class, is the best part. I mean, once you start, you feel like, you know that, you're never suppose to stop."

"Stop what?" I asked, finally giving the girl a good stare.

She opened her mouth to respond, but at that moment, a door at the far end of the gym opened. Kennedy strode through, wearing a glare equal to that of a sergeant general's snarl. She walked similar to that general as well. Contrary to the rest of the girls, she wore cargo pants and combat boots and her hair was pulled back into a tight bun. Her mouth a thin line and her eyes purified wood, Kennedy was having the time of her life.

"Ladies, nothing's different since the day you stepped in here. What are you waiting for?"

Her eyes glowed as the girls dispersed across the mats. They went off in groups of about two or four, stepped a few feet back from a partner and then, attacked. Immediately, a storm of ninjas came to mind as I stood in the dead center of a room full of martial art fighters. They whirled and kicked and punched. Some fell to the ground. Others jumped into the air and slammed their feet into their opponents' face. I tried to turn, to get out of the mass, but every time I turned, there was a leg or an arm or a body that stopped me.

"Hey, newbie!" Kennedy yelled and I turned to see her standing on a corner of a mat with something between a grin and a snarl plastered on her face. "You make it uneven, so you get to fight me."

"Fight?" I asked. "I am not. Doing. This."

"Just try it out." At that moment, I knew it wasn't about teaching me how to fight. She just wanted to kick the crap out of something. And that really pissed me off.

I stepped over to her and crossed my arms. "So what, we bow to our sensai?"

"No, like this."

She stepped back, her front arm crossed down over her body and the other curled back. I raised an eyebrow, the headshake clearly unneeded. "I'm still waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop out and do that stupid face of his."

"Well, he's not. So come on, in stance and fight me."

I barely pulled my foot back behind me before she moved and kicked out. My balance lost, I fell to the ground and hit my shoulder.

"Come on, do this again. Where's that instinct to kill?"

"Oh, it's here, I promise." I growled and pulled myself to my feet.

"Then lets see it."

I pulled myself back into stance and she kicked out again, in the same way but I shuffled and she missed. That was pretty cool, until her elbow jerked up and swiped against my jaw. I stumbled to the side, my jaw popping with pain. She grinned a disgusting smile as I rubbed at the pain, wondering if it was possible for that part of your body to be dislocated. I stepped at her again, and this time swung forward. She ducked and at that, I kicked her side. She twisted away, the grin faltering. Apparently, it stung. It was my turn to be smug. That didn't settle well with Kennedy at all.

She hopped closer and punched at my chest. She missed, but only barely; I leaned away at the last second. Then, without prior warning, a wildly fast knee jerked up and hit me in the stomach. I doubled over and she punched me to the ground.

She wasn't exactly laughing at me but she was towering over me in such a way that made furious anger bolt out of my chest in an uncontrolled fury. I slammed my fist to the ground and bounded to my feet. I punched at her, faster and faster, Kennedy shoving my punches away. A frustrated growl hissed out from my gritted teeth as I pushed forward with my punches and we slid back towards the edge of the mat. Somewhere off in the far distance, I noticed all else was quiet in the gym, except for the smash of bone against bone and the occasional grunt from me.

She was no longer grinning, but my attacks weren't causing her to concentrate. They were fended off easily, and that idea, made me only move faster and hit harder. I hadn't reached furious, but my anger was reaching a boiling point.

"You're not a Slayer," I heard her mutter. "You might be new but this should be instinctual."

This tipped me over the edge. Instead of swinging around, I punched forward, faster and faster. Anger was fighting to get out of me, the feeling slowly evolving into rage. Kennedy wasn't even looking at me anymore; she was doing her very best to keep the punches from landing into her stomach.

Blood was pulsing in my ears, blocking out anything that wasn't the target and my wild fists. But now, they weren't just insane flings of my arms. They were slow and controlled but unbelievably powerful. The awareness bubble had encased me again and I could feel Kennedy's fear. It was cold and heavy, like molasses. Time slowed and with each breath I took, I felt my lungs expand and slow down. Each drop of sweat that splattered on the mat was like a rush of water pouring over a cliff face. Sweat made my palms smooth. Kennedy's eyes were focused on my fists, her thick eyelids dropping slowly and then picking back up again. I raised my right arm, my shirt sticking to my side with sweat. Then, with surprising speed in this world of heavy clarity, I punched Kennedy right in the face.

Time awoke again from its temporary sleep. As soon as my fist collided with her face, she flew back, falling faster than I realized. She hit the wood and slid for a moment, before sitting up and putting a hand to her face. Blood was gushing from her nose and her eyes were wide and terrified. I flexed my fingers and heard a pop.

"Kennedy," Xander was at the door where the older Slayer had first come in. "What's going on?"

He stepped over and helped the girl to her feet. By the way her brown eyes never left my face, it wasn't the bleeding nose that frightened her. Xander looked over at me, his dark brows knitting together as his stare switched from me to Kennedy.

"Come on, Willow will fix you up." Xander pulled her out the door, and I watched them go, turning as I did. They finally disappeared behind the doors and I looked out at the group of girls watching me. Apparently, they had been watching me the whole time and as I returned the glare, everyone twitched away, a sort of flinch. They were absolutely terrified of me. Not in the good way, as in a scary respect. They were scared, that kind of icy-cold fear that runs down your back and makes you jerk awake in nightmares. It was a deep and intimate fear they felt. For the newbie. For me.

Oh crap.