For personal enjoyment not for profit, if you recognize it, I don't own it, just bending and folding it.
Chapter 5
Xander bounced down the stairs Sunday morning, the past two weeks had been fun, Mom and Vivian had gotten together and sent he and Faith to Summer camp on Catalina. Snorkeling, kayaking, and sailing were great, but the activity he and Faith had gravitated to almost every day was archery. They had won camp trophies for that but had also placed first in their age groups for kayak races.
Xander heard Faith telling Mom about the end of camp competition and how she and Xander had capsized their dinghy, the sail regatta being the one event they had failed spectacularly at.
Xander entered the kitchen and without interrupting them wordlessly got himself a cup of coffee and plated up a couple of breakfast. Near as he and Faith could tell, one of the side effects of the cleansing ritual they had performed was that his Mom had gotten a little more domestic.
He sat down and took a bite, "Delicious Mom."
"Thank you Honey," Mom said smiling. She then looked more serious, "Now would you two like to tell me why Vi got a call from the camp director asking her if she knew the two kids she signed up for camp had tattoos?"
Faith and Xander looked at each other, Faith ducked her head slightly and looked to their guardian. "It was my idea, Aunt Jessica, it's kind of a Boston thing, well an old sailor thing anyway."
"Explain."
"When a sailor does something significant; sails around the horn or crosses the equator, or survives something like a shipwreck, they use an earring or a tattoo to commemorate it." Faith took a deep breath, "I figured Xander and I had gone through something major this summer, but we are better for it. We now have a sibling we can count on, I've got you and Uncle Rory, Mr Harris to a lessor extent. It just felt right to link that."
Xander could see his mom mentally counting to ten. She seemed to do it a second time.
"Okay I can see that, I'm not pleased, but you kids are going through a lot and you haven't gotten into any other trouble. Rory says good things about your work ethic, and a couple of the neighbors you've been working for have actually spoken to me to make sure you would be back this week so you can help them out." She paused for a moment, "You're not planning on any more tattoos right?"
"No Ma'am," Faith said.
"No Mom," Xander answered.
"Okay, finals do not count as a major achievement. No more tattoos until you're at least 16 and do not get any sports teams or anyone's name."
"No Ma'am."
"Okay, let me see these works of art."
Both kids sheepishly turned and lifted their shirts so their left shoulders were bared. the had opted to work the runes into a simple triquesta pattern that was then filled in with a different ink to make the runes less distinct if not viewed closely. they also chose the shoulder even though it weakened the perception runes slightly because they didn't know how to hide a tattoo on the face.
"Okay, so did you pick them for any special meaning or just because they look cool."
"Clarity of thought, clarity of vision, and safety/protection." Faith answered.
Mom just nodded and gestured for them to sit back down, "I'm a bit disappointed, but not enough that I'm going to punish you two the week of your birthday." that was something else that had changed, Faith's birthday which had been in November her first go around, was shifted to the end of July, the day before Xander's. Xander thought it was because D had either anticipated or steered their idea to have her skip a grade which was easier to explain if she was just a little bit older. Xander was relieved to hear this, uncle Rory was taking them on a camping trip to go hunting next weekend. Xander remembered his uncle's Taxidermies including the boars like they would be hunting this weekend, not that Xander wanted a stuffed boar, but the first time he was a teenager he had adored the taste of boar meat, of course the hyena might have had something to do with that. After spending the morning helping clean up the house and doing loads of laundry from their camp duffles, they went over to Willow's house where the game group was meeting.
"So, Alec and Fidelia have returned from the delivery of the prototypes you obtained from ZCorp, you have all received your certified credit sticks and Krugerrands as agreed." Andrew stated the game reason they had used so they could play the two without Xander and Faith as he set up his game screen. "Is anyone purchasing any new equipment or upgrades?"
After they had made their purchase and selected what to have spent their KP on in their down time, Andrew lead them into the day's mission
One of the things that actually surprised Xander about how Andrew ran the game was that he didn't require that they make a specific budget and itemize things other than their weapons and specialized equipment, they just had a set monthly living cost depending on their accommodations and lifestyle.
"Wanda, while studying at the conclave, you are approached by a senior mage wearing a Ticorp employee pin, 'Miss Rosin, I am David Matsui, I have a lucrative matter that I'm told you and your associates might be able to help me with. Would you join me in a meeting room?'" Andrew started off.
Willow looked up, "I'd be happy to meet with you, Mr. Matsui, although I can't speak for my associates without first discussing the matter with them."
The run turned out to be more combat than anything they had done to before a small group of vampires that had set moved in to Ticorp free space. Ticorp wanted them dealt with and wanted any data that could be gathered to find out if the vampires had been paid to cause trouble in the Ticorp affiliated space.
It was a fairly simple mission and everything went fine, Hack and subvert security in the area briefly, sneak in and kill the four vampires. Just like in real life fire magic was very effective against the undead, that they had been provided intelligence on without attracting either LoneStar (the cops) or Ticorp internal security, while Faith and Jesse's characters were ransacking the house and loading anything portable of value into the delivery van that Jesse's character Jack had borrowed through a couple of intermediaries, Marcie and Xander's characters were hacking the dusted vampires computers.
Marcie rolled to defeat the ICE on the terminal that was in the home office.
"Sue, you are able to deactivate the system's security you start copying and scanning the contents, roll your perception," Andrew looks at the dice Marcie rolls. "Sue, you have discovered that the now deceased Vincent Capulet appears to be a member of Ticorp security."
This announcement was like kicking a hornet's nest, with hurried actions to remove any traces that they were there, the party finished what they were doing and left Ticorp territory returning to Alec's garage. His legitimate business was an auto repair shop that made modifications that were only slightly outside of the law. They contacted the trader that acted as escrow to get the balance of funds that were being held for completion of the job and after Faith's character Lia spoke to her fellow fixer they initiated a trace to find out where the money to pay for their job had come from.
"And that's where we leave our party this week," Andrew finished.
In their usual post game activity, they worked on modifications to their characters Willow and Marcie tried to get Andrew to reveal details what they would be facing in upcoming parts of the campaign. Johnathan and Jesse were busy offering advice about upgrading the boat that Xander's character lived on when Xander overheard Andrew and Willow.
" – Tucker was saying I should ignore this fake magic and go with summoning."
"But that's like really high level magic in the game," Willow said.
"There are ways to do it though." Andrew responded.
"I've read some of the novels to get a better feel for the game system, and other than some elemental summoning and summoning to speak with ghosts, it always ends badly." Willow said sharply.
"Well, this wouldn't be until your character has much more power" – Xander lost the rest of Andrew's response when Johnathan put the vehicle reference guide in front of him.
"If you go with these engines, you can get another five hundred liters of fuel and a couple hundred more km of range."
Xander gave his attention back to the conversation at hand but started to make plans.
After dinner that night Mom said she had some important news.
"Alex, Faith, there's something I need your help with," she looked at them both intently. "now that I'm receiving the fostercare stipend and Tony has started sending me money to help," Xander idly wondered if his father thought of the alimony and child support as helping. He had spent a couple of days with his dad since the separation, usually on Rory's fishing boat since that was an activity that didn't cost Tony anything other than gas and let them have something to do that allowed him to not talk to Xander about the divorce. "I can cut back a shift at the hospital and I'm planning on going back to school to finish up my RN. I need your help because even though I'm going to be working less, I'm going to be a lot busier. You guys have been great with helping to keep the house in good shape and that's part of what I need help with, but I also need you guys to not pull anymore stunts like the tattoos okay?"
Xander and Faith both nodded agreement.
"I'm sorry Aunt Jessica, it wasn't the best idea I've ever had," Faith apologized. "I hope it doesn't get you into any trouble. Aunt Viv isn't going to get into any trouble is she?"
"Faith, Honey, it's okay," Mom said taking the young woman's hand. "Vivian told me she put it down as something you already had so there's no worry there. I just need you, both of you, to think a little more before you act." She turned to Xander. "Alex, can you excuse us, I'd like to talk to Faith alone for a bit."
Alex got up and went upstairs. He left his door cracked so he could hear a little better.
"Faith, I'm actually kind of glad that you two decided to get tattoos," Xander heard his mom say. "It's a good example of things that can have permanent effects." Xander couldn't make out the next couple of sentences. "I was reluctant to bring it up after what happened to you, but we need to talk about sex." Xander remembered his own no nonsense birds and bees talk with his mother the healthcare worker.
He got up and shut the door going over to his bookshelf he pulled out a Rifts manual and the copy of The Poor Man's James Bond, he thought about Tucker Wells and what he knew about the incident with hell hounds and how Andrew had in later years said that he learned demon summoning from his brother. Tucker was a problem that they could nip in the bud. He was reading about simple poisons when there was a knock at the door. Xander casually pulled the Rifts book on top of the anarchist's field manual, "Yes."
Faith stuck her head in, she was actually blushing, "Your mom wanted you to come back downstairs."
Xander followed the dark haired girl back to the kitchen.
"Sorry to ask you to leave Alex, as busy as we're all going to be, I've got something to make life a little easier," She reached into her purse and pulled out two pagers, a black and a blue Motorola LS550 and a small manual. "This isn't a birthday present, we use them at work all the time, in fact, I actually got these from work, they are in the process of upgrading the doctors to alpha numeric pagers and IT is selling these off cheap." She set them in the center of the table. "choose which one you want."
Xander reached out and held his hand over the blue one, when Faith nodded, he picked it up. Turning it over, there was a label on the back that had a phone number on it. He saw his mom take a card out of her wallet and write his name and Faith's name next to numbers that were already written.
"The manual will tell you how to set them up. They have voicemail, but only eight message slots, so keep those cleared. I don't want to try to contact you and get a box full message. Keep them out of sight and on vibrate or silent at school. A lot of morons still think of them as being only for gang member s and drug dealers. this way if my schedule changes or I need to talk to you, I can reach you. but also with working for Rory and the little yard work and house cleaning business you have going I thought this would be helpful."
"Thanks Mom."
"Okay you two, I've got some bills to pay, but since my body clock isn't quite switched back to days, I'm going to put a movie on in about an hour."
Xander took that for the dismissal that it was and went back upstairs. A few minutes later Faith came in and sat on the bed. Knowing it was her without bothering to turn around, Xander hadn't bothered to put away what he was reading.
Seeing what he was reading, Faith looked at Xander, "just general research, or did you have a target in mind?"
"Tucker," Xander said without looking up.
"Andrew's brother?"
"Yeah, I had completely forgotten about him and the Hell Hounds." Xander said looking up.
"So you're thinking preemptive strike?"
"Yeah."
"Do we know that he has gone dark?"
"Well, if he's talking to Andrew about summoning, he's not exactly a white hat."
"Okay, but why now, we've got a lot of time before prom, and wasn't that his first time hitting the dark arts?"
"That we know of," Xander muttered making some notes.
"So, we watch him, we've got an in hanging out with Andrew." Faith offered. "If we hear or see anything, we take him out."
"Not waiting for that."
"Xander, look at me," Faith demanded.
Xander looked up.
"We agreed we're not taking action yet. Richard III gets a pass until later, Angel doesn't get dusted on sight, Why do you want to kill this guy who we don't know has done anything yet?"
"I don't want him talking to Willow about magic."
"None of the game group know she knows anything about magic, Tucker isn't part of the group, so why do you think that would happen?"
"Andrew is a boy, teenage boys try to impress girls, if he thinks talking about real magic will impress her, he might get his brother involved."
"So on the off chance that she might hear about magic we don't want her to, you're willing to pay that invoice."
"You weren't at Kingman's Bluff, you didn't see her two steps from ending the world, I don't want to see that."
"I get that, but are you ready to go that route?"
"Well it's been a few months, but I'm ready."
"I don't think we should do this at this yet. There's too many ways it can blow up on us."
Xander leaned back and thought for a moment, "Explain to me how it isn't a simple solution which keeps a known potential threat from ambushing us."
"Ripples, who knows what will happen in the next four years that may or may not lead to Tucker going Columbine with the hell hounds. Ripples we can guess it would cause, Andrew being drawn to the dark sooner. Let's face it, we live on the hellmouth, his brother being poisoned or shot isn't going to end well. Getting caught, if we get caught, we lose our ability to shape things. Once she knows things go bump in the night, Willow might cope, now it would destroy her. Darla is still out there, I thought she was our first major target?"
Xander closed the book, "Fine."
"Look Xander, from what Willow and I have talked about she is focusing on magics that use elemental energy and focus her inner energy. With all the times she's talked to me about cleansing and avoiding tainted energy, she'd be the first one to avoid the magics Tucker did in the future," Faith said placating him. "I'll talk to her, bring up what Andrew said and make sure she doesn't get involved. It shouldn't be too hard, she's already said that she's not real comfortable talking about magic with other people."
"Okay," Xander said feeling a little better. "You're right, let's focus first on Darla, and being ready for the Harvest."