Chapter 13: Besides, My Eyes Are Not Accustomed to This Light -

Thursday September 17, 1998; Sunnydale High School Library, noonish.

Lunch at the library was a pretty tense affair, or at least, it would have been a 'lunch' if there were anything to eat besides leftover donuts. As it was, sans food, Jonathan was honestly debating with himself whether it really counted as lunch at all. It was just 'tense', past and present. The mental pun wasn't quite as cheering as he'd thought it'd be... Jonathan settled back at one of the round tables, looking over a few pieces of occult literature that seemed to have narrowed the playing field a little, while Giles worked hi sway through other possibilities. However, Jonathan's own broad knowledge base left a lot of holes specific to this kind of situation. He wasn't even sure half the stuff in this book was real.

He was definitely sure he didn't want it to be.

"Hmm." Jonathan's eyes narrowed as a thought struck him. He approached it carefully, trying not to frighten it.

"Hmm?" Giles glanced up from his own research, giving Jonathan a sharp look.

"Just... " Jonathan shook his head, making a vague gesture at the various magical and demonic encyclopedias. "What if we're looking in the wrong places entirely?"

Raising an eyebrow in what was possibly one of the first serious considerations Giles had given him, the librarian closed his volume while using a finger to mark his place. Regarding Jonathan with interest, he said, "Do continue, please."

"Well, uh," Jonathan made a frustrated gesture at the books. "We're not finding anything that matches here. And I know you're aware of that," he added hastily, "So, what if instead of spellcraft or demon effects, maybe we should be looking at mythology?"

"Hmm." Giles' expression took on an abstracted mien. Reaching up to adjust his glasses, he peered at Jonathan over the frame tops. "You've captured my interest. Can you elaborate?"

"Uh. Maybe?" Drumming his fingers on the tabletop briefly, Jonathan blew out his breath and gathered his thoughts. "Ok. We've got people who're acting in ways that are outside of their norms. A lot of the behavior we have sounds wild. I mean - Wild Kingdom wild, not spring break wild. And there's always been beings in mythology that were able to kinda, uh, induce various types of behavior in mortals just by their aspects. You know, Bacchus, Dionysus, Pan, Mielikki... "

"Indeed. I am familiar with some of the legends," Giles nodded. His brow furrowed and he suggested, "I find myself rather hoping that we are dealing with a more mundane supernatural explanation, as it were, than an aspect of some of the possibilities you've mentioned." His voice taking on a dry tone, he said, "I rather do not fancy having to deal with one of the Greek or Roman deities."

"Hah!" Jonathan shook his head, feeling an urge to break out in hysterical laughter. "Oh, yeah. Me too."

"Quite." Giles favored him with a small grin. "However- " Giles broke off and looked over when the main door banged open and Oz burst in looking slightly panicked.

Jonathan brightened a little. "Hey Oz," he asked. "You get drafted too?"

Oz threw a quick look around the library, and leaned against the juncture of the main doors, his palms flat against them. "Less talk," he stated in a strained voice. "More with the door holding."

"Holding..." Jonathan managed before the doors exploded inward. He watched with wide eyed and morbid fascination as Willow, Aura, and Cordelia surged into the room as Oz was knocked aside as if he weighed nothing. It wasn't even really the obviously insane strength they exhibited. It was the way they moved...

Willow burst in hunched forward, her clawed hands resting on their knuckles as she slid to a stop, knees bent. Her green eyes were flashing and her hair was wild, almost bristling forward on her scalp. She bared her teeth at Jonathan in a kind of demonic smirk he'd never seen on Willow Rosenberg before in his life, her lips peeled back from her teeth. Aura was just as odd, bouncing in excitedly on all fours as well, and alternating between excited, high pitched coughing sounds and growling like some kind of dog.

By far the oddest was Cordelia, though she was still upright. She moved in a fluid and jerky way all at the same time, elbows akimbo as if her arms weren't quite under her control the way they might be in someone else. Hopping up to crouch on a table top, she cocked her head in a precise movement as she regarded Oz with cold eyes.

Mr. Hideyoshi strode in behind them as they swept into the room, Hideyoshi closing the door behind them. He cut an odd figure, somehow looking less weathered than he had earlier, even a few days ago. His hair had almost no silver in it any more, and Jonathan was struck by how different - much younger - he looked than the picture in the older files.

"Fascinating," Hideyoshi said. He looked at Oz and Jonathan. "It's a shame that you've proven to be so astute. It is also a shame that your young associate wasn't as swift to act as you were in deducing a need to send her to my home."

'Oh crap,' Jonathan thought, his eyes widening, 'Harris was right - he did take out Faith... ' That was followed on the heels by, 'We are so screwed.'

Fixing his gaze on Oz, Hideyoshi added, "If your deductive skills were the equal of your test scores I possibly wouldn't be here right now. However, as it is, I am afraid you need to be removed before I can move on." He extended his hands, sickly yellow light glowing on them. The hackles raised on the back of Jonathan's neck as Hideyoshi swept his arms forward with a rumbling incantation in what must have been Japanese. Reacting purely on instinct, Jonathan threw himself sideways as Oz went the other direction. The bolt of crackling light missed him, but only barely.

As Willow bounded forward to pounce at Oz, shrieking, Jonathan wracked his brain, frantically trying to sort through the various things he'd gleaned from his own magical researches. Only one thing came to his mind and he wasn't sure if it'd even work, but he began reciting his own spell anyway, this one in Greek, while tracing a sigil in the air between him and Hideyoshi.

The Asian biology teacher suddenly screwed up his face and let out a tremendous sneeze. Jonathan blinked as the glow faded from Hideyoshi's hands and the sneezing fit intensified. He had all of ten seconds to feel superior when Aura crashed into him in a headlong charge. She didn't weigh terribly much, but she was moving very fast.

In any other situation, having an attractive girl straddling him would have caused him to check and see if he'd died and gone to heaven. However, at the moment, the pain and the fact that Aura looked like she might actually bite his face off were putting any amorous thoughts on near-permanent hold. Growling, she lunged into him, snapping, and Jonathan barely got his arm up between them. Aura's jaws closed on his sleeve and he was jerked about as she twisted and yanked with her head, neck, and upper body at the material.

Then Aura was suddenly gone from on top of him. Dazedly, he looked up to see Mr. Giles clutching... a 'Webster's Oxford Unabridged Edition'? As Jonathan's mind tried to process this, another fully functional aspect of his brain noted that Giles must have hit Aura with the flat of the heavy, hardbound volume.

"I believe we should make our exit, post haste," Giles said, giving the still allergenic Hideyoshi a very, very cold stare. In fact, his eyes reminded Jonathan uncomfortably of Jack O'Toole's. Mr. Giles looked like he wanted to hurt Mr. Hideyoshi, and keep hurting him for a very long time. Giles looked down at Jonathan's dumbstruck form and narrowed those icily angry eyes.

"Mr. Levinson, if you would be so kind as to move?" Giles grated out. "Now, please."

Aura slunk away, making whining sounds, and he noticed that some time during the struggle, Cordelia must have hopped off the table. She crouched near Hideyoshi's feet between Giles and the teacher, head and neck extended and making a weird 'chok chok chok' sound deep in her throat. As Jonathan hastily scrambled back to his feet, he saw Oz bring his feet up and shove Willow off of himself. With a peculiar expression, Oz shook his head slightly and brought his fist around in a short, hard arc to strike Willow on the jaw. She collapsed, the hideous shrieking noise she'd been making cutting off abruptly. Oz came up looking a bit battered, but otherwise okay.

The look Oz sent in Hideyoshi's direction was murderous in its intensity.

Without waiting for further instructions, Jonathan sprinted for the stacks doors. He tore it open and pelted down the open courtyard. Looking over his shoulder to Giles and Oz keeping pace behind him, he shouted out, "What the heck was that?"

"Why we were worried," Oz said, his voice betraying more emotions than Jonathan had ever heard him express.

"Oh," Jonathan muttered as Giles took the lead, striking out towards the parking lot. "Holy crap."

"Yup," Oz said, visibly calming down. With a sidelong glance at Jonathan, he added mildly, "In a nutshell."

In contrast to his again relaxed demeanor, the guitarist's eyes were still bleak, and as cold as the wind over a glacier. Jonathan shivered and refused to meet them again even after they were settled into Oz's van..

................................................

Thursday September 17, 1998; Sunnydale High School, noonish.

"Oh boy."

Puffing to a halt, Xander felt a relieved grin spread across his face as the front doors of Sunnydale High came into view. Relieved grin. Sunnydale High. Now that's two great tastes that don't normally go great together. Taking a deep breath, he bent over wincing as he rubbed at his hip. The long run from Hideyoshi's house back to the school hadn't done a lot good for the re-stressed vamp injury. Nor had running with one eye cast over his shoulder in fear that Feral Faith might have taken it into her head to follow after him, rumbling deep in her chest, once she'd shoved the refrigerator off of her.

Probably with a cheerfully maniacal Harmony bobbing and cackling right along side.

Half way up the steps to the main doors, Xander froze, one foot still raised over a step. Framed inside of the just opened doors above him, a sour looking Hideyoshi was in the process of stepping outside, flanked by a very strange looking Cordelia, Willow, and Aura. Strange even by today's standards of strangeness.

"Oh, boy... "

Her red hair bristling atop her head, Willow spotted him and dropped to her toes and knuckles, a harsh sound coming from her throat. Cordelia cocked her head, then lowered slightly with her arms spread while making a deep, odd, 'chok chok chok!' sound.

Xander didn't even wait to see what Hideyoshi and Aura did. Still with a broad grin frozen on his face and his foot in the air, he spun on the other foot, put the raised one down - and bolted full speed back down the stairs. Hitting the bottom step, he snagged the end of the railing with an old skate boarder's reflexes and spun around it, heading full speed along the front towards the side parking lot and side courtyards.

Not far enough behind him he could hear a madly barking Willow and a yipping Aura pounding along in chase. He put his feet down faster, head down and arms pumping.

Managing to pull ahead of the girls, assuming they were still girls, he ducked into the side courtyard and headed for the door into the library stacks. Barely slowing, he yanked open the door and flung himself inside, racing across the short stretch of floor and bypassing the short staircase to jump directly down to the main level.

"Giles! Giles!" Halfway to the front counter, the complete lack of people in the library registered on him and he realized - belatedly - that Hideyoshi and his entourage must've been coming from the library. Meaning that Giles, Oz, and whoever else had been here had already fled. Or been eaten...

No blood. No Giles popping out of the office, either.

The stacks door opened just after the brief period it had taken Xander to register and process all of that, and he spun again and shoved his way out through the main doors without looking behind him. Out in the hallway, he threw a fast, panicked glance around and headed for the back of the school and the lunchroom. 'Crowds,' he thought, slowing down to a fast limp. 'Maybe I can lose them in crowds.'

A door slamming open and startled exclamations from students behind him told him that 'slow' just stopped being an option. Drawing in a deep, ragged gulp of fresh air, he put another burst of speed on and shot away down the hall. Crashes, screams, shrieks, clatters, startled expressions, and the sounds of tables being shoved aside followed him through the lunchroom and cafeteria. He almost wished he had a camera and enough time to enjoy it.

Bursting through the rear doors of the lunchroom, he stormed into the Quad having gained at least a bit of a lead on his former friend and pursuers. He was halfway across the Quad heading for the exits leading to the tennis and basketball courts, sports fields, and rear parking lots when shouts to his rear announced that the trio of girls had made it through the lunchroom. Xander thought he just might have enough of a lead to lose the girls by ducking through the girl's basketball court and out the other side parking lot. Maybe circling back around afterwards and into the school to find an empty classroom to hide in.

Hide, dig out the pre-paid that Cordelia had sprung for at some point that was now seeming like a long time back, and shout for help. And hope that Hideyoshi and the possessed girls didn't find and dig him out while he was shouting...

About that time a trio of all too familiar looking goons unfolded from benches near the end of the Quad and he groaned internally. He didn't have the breath to do it out loud.

"Harris!" The shout drew eyes from around the Quad, even from people following the progress of the bizarrely acting Willow, Cordelia, and Aura. "You're dead, geek."

Stutter stepping, Xander managed to slow just enough to throw a fast glance over one shoulder and see that the three girls had closed part of his hard won lead. He thanked whatever gods watched over idiots that Hideyoshi had left Faith at his house - the brunette would have run him down long ago. And probably then have had her way with him on the lunchroom floor with Harmony screeching encouragement.

Whipping his head back to the front, Xander saw that he'd also closed part of the lead between himself, Jack, and Jack's two buddies. Unfortunately. He put his head down, dropped a shoulder, and barreled on, seeing Jack's eyes widen as it dawned on him - too late - that Xander wasn't slowing. Crazily, 'Revenge is mine, oh yes it is,' went through his mind...

Onlookers in the Quad that day would speak in hushed tones for weeks after of the day that Xander Harris pelted across the Quad with his girlfriend, best friend, and a Cordette in hot pursuit, leaving a trail of chaos behind them. Even more reverent - and disbelieving tones - would describe how he dropped a shoulder and nailed Jack O'Toole in the mid section with a line backer rush that would have made Larry Blaisdell proud, dropping him like a sack of potatoes and scattering Parker and Dickie like startled bowling pins. And then barreled on without slowing, leaving a prone, doubled over, and groaning O'Toole in his wake and disappearing out the side-rear Quad archway.

The onlookers would take on tones of true awe upon describing how Cordelia Chase, Aura Breckenridge, and an unusually well dressed Willow Rosenberg crashed into an astounded Jack, Dickie, and Parker from behind - Dickie and Parker being turned to look after the disappearing Xander Harris - and thoroughly mauling them. At least among the chess and math club contingent, the awe turned maliciously gleeful on describing how Cordelia landed on a supine O'Toole with her stylish heels and stomped him bloody. Beating him fiercely with her knees and elbows, apparently using some strange martial art form, the cheerleader nearly sent O'Toole to the school infirmary while Aura and Willow grappled down and savaged the other two before the senior biology teacher arrived to calm them and lead them away.

Xander was aware of none of this except for the fading shouts, shrieks, and screams of pain as he turned from the Quad archway towards the side parking lot, leaving consternation in his wake.

He managed to get halfway across the parking lot before a zebra striped van pulled up to the curb on the side street ahead of him. Heaving a sigh of relief, he slowed to a fast limp as a white faced Jonathan slid the side door open, shouting, "Get in! Hurry!"

Collapsing into the open side door, Xander shook his head dazedly as Jonathan tugged at him, pulling him all the way in so he could slide the doors shut. Oz took off as a disheveled Willow, Aura, and Cordelia exited the Quad with Hideyoshi, heading for the side lots on Xander's trail.

"Man. You guys are never gonna believe the day I've had... "

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