Posted: 2008-07-07 06:16pm
Chapter Sixteen: Further Aftermath
Buffy noted Xander leave after Willow had her little break down, but said nothing. While she and Giles helped Willow, Buffy’s brain quietly whirred away, putting together little pieces of information. It was actually scaring her the way things were working. The memories from Bella were a bit muddled and faded, but she could still grasp them, and some rose unbidden, her subconscious grasping at them for the tools to deal with a situation. And the old bitch had a huge number of mental tools to play with.
Already they had given Buffy enough information to fear for her sanity. She could easily develop multiple personality disorder if this kept up. There was her somewhat ditzy, valley girl persona, finely honed in the bitch-fests of Southern California high schools but then severely warped by the impact of having to shoulder the burden of being the Slayer. Then there was the Slayer itself, a wild, impulsive thing that liked to smash things. And now there was the Inquisitor, a cold, hard, machine-like persona designed to ferret out secrets and weaknesses. The mixture was unstable, especially due to her resistance to fully embracing the Slayer and now the Inquisitor.
She feared the monsters in her, but the Inquisitor was now telling her that if she did not embrace these facets of her personality she would break. The Slayer was part of her and if she did not control it, it would run wild on her. In fact, it often did because she did not have the mental strength to truly control it. How often had she run off without any idea what she was getting into only for it to bite her, sometimes literally, in the ass?
She needed to get her act together, not just for herself or the sake of the world, but for her friends. Willow had a head full of memories of an Imperial Assassin, creatures who could not exactly be described of as human and who did things that a young, mostly innocent girl really should not have to think about. Xander… Xander had the memories of a demigod stuck in his, along with who knew what else. They all needed to learn to deal with these memories, or they would all suffer because of them.
The Inquisitor part of her, ever devious, pointed out to the valley girl that even if they came from different cultures with different styles, they both had a refined taste in fashion, so there was at least some common ground there.
Having to admit that despite being an old lady and playing by slightly different rules, Inquisitor Bella did know how to put together a good outfit. She then started shuffling through the memories looking for anything to help Willow out. Somewhere in there she found the knowledge that Bella had on the Temple Assassins.
She then wished she had checked earlier because it was all so simple.
Taking Willow in a hug, Buffy asked, “Willow, who are you?”
Willow blinked a few times before sobbing out, “I don’t know!”
“Does the assassin know?” Buffy asked.
“What?” Willow replied, confused by the question.
“The memories from the assassin. What do they say about who you are?” Buffy said.
Willow paused for a moment before she said, “They… they… they say that I am me. I…”
“You were possessed by a Callidus assassin, correct? She could assume new personalities so completely that even psychics had a hard time telling her from fakes, right? She would say things, do things to further the mission that might be completely opposite to her personality, and yet she remained true to herself and her mission, right? So use that, use that training, that undeniable sense of personality to help you. You are Willow, you are not an assassin; do you hear me?” Buffy said.
Nodding, Willow said a little more firmly, “I think so.”
“Alright, let’s go help you clean up there,” Buffy said, helping up her friend. She then added on, “Maybe you can help the rest of us too. I know Xander could probably use some help with that too. He’s got the most memories to deal with you know.”
Nodding, Willow said a bit more happily, “Yeah… yeah, I could really help him out.”
Giles looked concerned as Buffy led Willow away to the nearest washroom, but he didn’t say anything at the moment, instead giving Buffy a silent Watcher glance that said that he would talk to her later.
The First Evil was pissed in a way that was hard to describe in mortal terms. That little spell that had gone off last night had tapped into the Hellmouth to draw much of its power and it had been a huge power hog. While not enough to actually destabilize the Hellmouth that was because the inhabitants had been drained by the spell. Out of the thousands of Turok-Han within the Hellmouth, two were left.
Two!
Worse yet, in the balance of Good and Evil, that little episode had not significantly changed the scales, and in fact may have tipped it a little towards Evil, meaning that the First was probably going to be even more limited than before.
It would find who had done this. Oh, it would find them and make them pay…
Mayor Richard Wilkins III was pissed in a way that was hard to tell behind his eternally smiling façade. He would never show it or rant or rave or, horrors forbid, swear, but all of his subordinates were tip-toeing around him for fear of his eerily pleasant yet still deadly wrath.
What had happened last night, it threatened everything he had worked for, and made him look bad both to his constituents and to the various demons he had contracts with. This was something that could not be tolerated. Oh no, it could not be tolerated at all.
His resources already told him that the centre of the ruckus last night had been that two-bit chaos mage Ethan Rayne, but the man had neither the power nor the lack of self-preservation instincts to do something so destructive. Someone had interfered with his spell. Someone powerful and skilled at hiding their tracks, as all the auguries and divinations that had been cast so far said that Ethan Rayne was the only one involved in the spell.
That meant that they were looking for a chaos mage or mages, because only one of them would be crazy enough to pull a stunt like that, of immense power and skill to not only interfere with the ritual but cover their tracks that effectively afterward. Unfortunately the Mayor thought that he already knew all of the chaos mages with that much power and had made deals, unbreakable deals at that, with them to stay out of his sandbox. This meant that he was dealing with a chaos mage who had somehow managed to rise to power without drawing the sort of attention that went along with being a super powered lunatic.
The Mayor was looking for a contradiction, a paradox. Perfect. Just perfect. That was what he really needed right now, to have something that should not exist running about causing him trouble while he was trying to do damage control on the town and with his contacts.
Sighing, he pulled out his memo pad and began figuring out what he would need to do today. Another press conference, reassuring the governor that everything was under control, acquiring the Tome of Tal’nach’elb, and reviewing his list of virgin sacrifices. Yeah, that should do for the rest of the afternoon.
Buffy watched wide-eyed as Xander lifted the terrified Larry into the air and could not help but think of how just a few days ago she had been the one keeping the bully off Xander’s back. After the nearly petrified football player ran scurrying off to get the hell out of town, Xander glanced about to see if anyone had seen him before a look of utter self loathing washed over him.
Stuck to the shadows with decades of experience on how not to be seen while trailing someone, Buffy tried to think of something to say to Xander. Part of her wanted to berate him for being stupid, but another part knew that it wasn’t his fault he had the memories stuck in his head, had the power stuck in his body.
That however left her wondering that if he could have some of the supernatural power left over from having Sanguinius stuck in him, what else might be left in them? Skills and knowledge was one thing, but what about physical things? Bella wouldn’t really add much to Buffy physically, but for her friends who had their bodies inhabited by super humans, what could they now do?
It was something worth exploring, although the majority of Buffy rebelled at the thought of using her friends like mere weapons, although the Inquisitor part pointed out that a lot of her objection was probably pure ego talking, seeing as there was a piece of her that would feel threatened at the loss of her ‘special’ status as Slayer if her friends became super powered. That of course was silly, seeing as how if all three of them were on equal terms they would all be safer and there was less chance of them dying at a critical time and the world ending.
Buffy frowned sourly at the thought before squashing it. She had bigger fish to fry. So she followed quietly behind Xander until he collapsed in a chair from exhaustion, at which point she moved up to talk to him.
Looking up, Xander’s face fell and he looked down ashamed to say, “You saw that, didn’t you?”
Buffy considered for a moment before she said, “Yes. I suppose all I have to ask is why?”
Still staring at the floor, Xander fidgeted for a moment before he said, “Because I was angry at Larry for what the thing wearing him last night did. He hurt Cordelia, he flayed off her face! When Cordy recovers she’s not going to want to see him ever again, so I made sure she never would. I wanted to hurt Larry so bad, and it took every fibre of me to not tie him into a pretzel and then go on a rampage. Oh God Buffy, I’m so scared right now.”
Xander then hugged himself tightly and shuddered as if he had stepped out into a Siberian blizzard in one of his regular Hawaiian shirts.
“Listen Xander, you’re not alone. Willow and I, we went through the same thing, and while I’m sure you got the worst of it, we can help you… especially Willow. She probably now knows the most of any one of us about having a firm grasp on her identity and controlling her emotions. We can all help each other out here.”
Finally looking up, Xander let a smile cross his face and he said, “Look at me here, being given the Xander-speech about how I have friends by Buffy. Last night really did a number on us, didn’t it?”
Buffy’s first instinct was to be insulted, but that calm, cool part of her that had been forcibly inserted last night held her back and let her now that her friend was hurting and looking for anything humorous to soothe his wounded mind. And in retrospect it was grimly ironic.
Nodding, Buffy smiled and said, “You’re right, and let me tell you, it’s a pain in the ass, so can we work on making you more Xander-y so we can go back to our normal roles? Being the one pouting is so much more fun than being the one trying to do the cheering up.”
Laughing now, Xander said, “Great! Now I think you’re doing my job better than I am!”
“Come on, we need to get some donuts and ice cream and watch some stupid comedy movies,” Buffy offered.
“No chick flicks,” Xander warned with dark seriousness before his face cracked into a lopsided grin and he said, “Okay, maybe one chick flick if I get to choose a guy comedy.”
“I think we use that as a point of negotiation. Come on, let’s go get Willow and Giles,” Buffy said.
Rising unsteadily on still exhausted legs, Xander posed heroically and said, “To the library!”
Inquisitor Bella lay stripped and naked, a restraining collar about her neck as she lay in front of a council of her peers, who all stared down at her. She gritted her teeth against the pain of the past several weeks of poking and prodding and psychic contact as they had determined whether or not she had been tainted by her experience. Finally she would hear the decision that had been made. While she showed no fear of her fellows, Bella’s heart was clutched with terror. After all, she had been the one to call for this trial.
“Inquisitor Bella de Lancourt, you asked for a trial to test you for corruption after you claim to have had your soul removed from your body by foul sorceries. You have endured every test set before you with the honour and dignity befitting an Inquisitor… or the skill of a master liar. We now stand ready to deliver our judgement,” Lord Inquisitor Stamos declared. “Do you have anything to say?”
“My fate is in the hands of the Emperor, I shall not protest your decision either way,” Bella replied.
“Good. Then you should know that our testing shows that you have been affected by the foulness of Chaos sorcery,” Stamos said.
Hanging her head, Bella said, “Then I await execution.”
Stamos held up a hand and said, “You have been affected, but not tainted, there is a difference. Your story of being drawn against your will into the body of another has been confirmed by a Callidus Assassin who called for an emergency mission abort with a similar tale… and by a request to spare you from the Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels.”
Tears of joy began to well up in Bella’s eyes as she heard that. “Then my story…”
“It would seem that you are one of the most blessed people in all of His Imperial Majesty’s Imperium, if you truly did see Lord Sanguinius,” Stamos said, the barest hint of a smile creasing his ancient and deadly serious face.
“I expect that the Blood Angels will wish to speak with me then,” Bella asked.
“They do indeed. From this point onward all rights and privileges as an Inquisitor have been restored to you. Guards, please release the lady and give her something to restore some of her dignity,” Lord Stamos ordered and a pair of Inquisitorial storm troopers detached themselves from the shadows and went to release Lady Bella.
As she had her restraints removed and a sheet to cover herself, Bella let the hard look of an Inquisitor return to her eyes and she said, “I hope I will not sound presumptuous if I request the chance to get to the bottom of this, especially if it at all portends the return of Lord Sanguinius, or Emperor protect, the Archenemy Horus. I only wish I could have seen the end of their fight.”
“I would expect nothing less from you, and you will receive all the support we can muster. This event must not go unanswered. We will find this world and learn what importance it holds,” Lord Stamos said with absolute certainty.
Bella nodded. The Inquisition was going to find Sunnydale.
Buffy noted Xander leave after Willow had her little break down, but said nothing. While she and Giles helped Willow, Buffy’s brain quietly whirred away, putting together little pieces of information. It was actually scaring her the way things were working. The memories from Bella were a bit muddled and faded, but she could still grasp them, and some rose unbidden, her subconscious grasping at them for the tools to deal with a situation. And the old bitch had a huge number of mental tools to play with.
Already they had given Buffy enough information to fear for her sanity. She could easily develop multiple personality disorder if this kept up. There was her somewhat ditzy, valley girl persona, finely honed in the bitch-fests of Southern California high schools but then severely warped by the impact of having to shoulder the burden of being the Slayer. Then there was the Slayer itself, a wild, impulsive thing that liked to smash things. And now there was the Inquisitor, a cold, hard, machine-like persona designed to ferret out secrets and weaknesses. The mixture was unstable, especially due to her resistance to fully embracing the Slayer and now the Inquisitor.
She feared the monsters in her, but the Inquisitor was now telling her that if she did not embrace these facets of her personality she would break. The Slayer was part of her and if she did not control it, it would run wild on her. In fact, it often did because she did not have the mental strength to truly control it. How often had she run off without any idea what she was getting into only for it to bite her, sometimes literally, in the ass?
She needed to get her act together, not just for herself or the sake of the world, but for her friends. Willow had a head full of memories of an Imperial Assassin, creatures who could not exactly be described of as human and who did things that a young, mostly innocent girl really should not have to think about. Xander… Xander had the memories of a demigod stuck in his, along with who knew what else. They all needed to learn to deal with these memories, or they would all suffer because of them.
The Inquisitor part of her, ever devious, pointed out to the valley girl that even if they came from different cultures with different styles, they both had a refined taste in fashion, so there was at least some common ground there.
Having to admit that despite being an old lady and playing by slightly different rules, Inquisitor Bella did know how to put together a good outfit. She then started shuffling through the memories looking for anything to help Willow out. Somewhere in there she found the knowledge that Bella had on the Temple Assassins.
She then wished she had checked earlier because it was all so simple.
Taking Willow in a hug, Buffy asked, “Willow, who are you?”
Willow blinked a few times before sobbing out, “I don’t know!”
“Does the assassin know?” Buffy asked.
“What?” Willow replied, confused by the question.
“The memories from the assassin. What do they say about who you are?” Buffy said.
Willow paused for a moment before she said, “They… they… they say that I am me. I…”
“You were possessed by a Callidus assassin, correct? She could assume new personalities so completely that even psychics had a hard time telling her from fakes, right? She would say things, do things to further the mission that might be completely opposite to her personality, and yet she remained true to herself and her mission, right? So use that, use that training, that undeniable sense of personality to help you. You are Willow, you are not an assassin; do you hear me?” Buffy said.
Nodding, Willow said a little more firmly, “I think so.”
“Alright, let’s go help you clean up there,” Buffy said, helping up her friend. She then added on, “Maybe you can help the rest of us too. I know Xander could probably use some help with that too. He’s got the most memories to deal with you know.”
Nodding, Willow said a bit more happily, “Yeah… yeah, I could really help him out.”
Giles looked concerned as Buffy led Willow away to the nearest washroom, but he didn’t say anything at the moment, instead giving Buffy a silent Watcher glance that said that he would talk to her later.
The First Evil was pissed in a way that was hard to describe in mortal terms. That little spell that had gone off last night had tapped into the Hellmouth to draw much of its power and it had been a huge power hog. While not enough to actually destabilize the Hellmouth that was because the inhabitants had been drained by the spell. Out of the thousands of Turok-Han within the Hellmouth, two were left.
Two!
Worse yet, in the balance of Good and Evil, that little episode had not significantly changed the scales, and in fact may have tipped it a little towards Evil, meaning that the First was probably going to be even more limited than before.
It would find who had done this. Oh, it would find them and make them pay…
Mayor Richard Wilkins III was pissed in a way that was hard to tell behind his eternally smiling façade. He would never show it or rant or rave or, horrors forbid, swear, but all of his subordinates were tip-toeing around him for fear of his eerily pleasant yet still deadly wrath.
What had happened last night, it threatened everything he had worked for, and made him look bad both to his constituents and to the various demons he had contracts with. This was something that could not be tolerated. Oh no, it could not be tolerated at all.
His resources already told him that the centre of the ruckus last night had been that two-bit chaos mage Ethan Rayne, but the man had neither the power nor the lack of self-preservation instincts to do something so destructive. Someone had interfered with his spell. Someone powerful and skilled at hiding their tracks, as all the auguries and divinations that had been cast so far said that Ethan Rayne was the only one involved in the spell.
That meant that they were looking for a chaos mage or mages, because only one of them would be crazy enough to pull a stunt like that, of immense power and skill to not only interfere with the ritual but cover their tracks that effectively afterward. Unfortunately the Mayor thought that he already knew all of the chaos mages with that much power and had made deals, unbreakable deals at that, with them to stay out of his sandbox. This meant that he was dealing with a chaos mage who had somehow managed to rise to power without drawing the sort of attention that went along with being a super powered lunatic.
The Mayor was looking for a contradiction, a paradox. Perfect. Just perfect. That was what he really needed right now, to have something that should not exist running about causing him trouble while he was trying to do damage control on the town and with his contacts.
Sighing, he pulled out his memo pad and began figuring out what he would need to do today. Another press conference, reassuring the governor that everything was under control, acquiring the Tome of Tal’nach’elb, and reviewing his list of virgin sacrifices. Yeah, that should do for the rest of the afternoon.
Buffy watched wide-eyed as Xander lifted the terrified Larry into the air and could not help but think of how just a few days ago she had been the one keeping the bully off Xander’s back. After the nearly petrified football player ran scurrying off to get the hell out of town, Xander glanced about to see if anyone had seen him before a look of utter self loathing washed over him.
Stuck to the shadows with decades of experience on how not to be seen while trailing someone, Buffy tried to think of something to say to Xander. Part of her wanted to berate him for being stupid, but another part knew that it wasn’t his fault he had the memories stuck in his head, had the power stuck in his body.
That however left her wondering that if he could have some of the supernatural power left over from having Sanguinius stuck in him, what else might be left in them? Skills and knowledge was one thing, but what about physical things? Bella wouldn’t really add much to Buffy physically, but for her friends who had their bodies inhabited by super humans, what could they now do?
It was something worth exploring, although the majority of Buffy rebelled at the thought of using her friends like mere weapons, although the Inquisitor part pointed out that a lot of her objection was probably pure ego talking, seeing as there was a piece of her that would feel threatened at the loss of her ‘special’ status as Slayer if her friends became super powered. That of course was silly, seeing as how if all three of them were on equal terms they would all be safer and there was less chance of them dying at a critical time and the world ending.
Buffy frowned sourly at the thought before squashing it. She had bigger fish to fry. So she followed quietly behind Xander until he collapsed in a chair from exhaustion, at which point she moved up to talk to him.
Looking up, Xander’s face fell and he looked down ashamed to say, “You saw that, didn’t you?”
Buffy considered for a moment before she said, “Yes. I suppose all I have to ask is why?”
Still staring at the floor, Xander fidgeted for a moment before he said, “Because I was angry at Larry for what the thing wearing him last night did. He hurt Cordelia, he flayed off her face! When Cordy recovers she’s not going to want to see him ever again, so I made sure she never would. I wanted to hurt Larry so bad, and it took every fibre of me to not tie him into a pretzel and then go on a rampage. Oh God Buffy, I’m so scared right now.”
Xander then hugged himself tightly and shuddered as if he had stepped out into a Siberian blizzard in one of his regular Hawaiian shirts.
“Listen Xander, you’re not alone. Willow and I, we went through the same thing, and while I’m sure you got the worst of it, we can help you… especially Willow. She probably now knows the most of any one of us about having a firm grasp on her identity and controlling her emotions. We can all help each other out here.”
Finally looking up, Xander let a smile cross his face and he said, “Look at me here, being given the Xander-speech about how I have friends by Buffy. Last night really did a number on us, didn’t it?”
Buffy’s first instinct was to be insulted, but that calm, cool part of her that had been forcibly inserted last night held her back and let her now that her friend was hurting and looking for anything humorous to soothe his wounded mind. And in retrospect it was grimly ironic.
Nodding, Buffy smiled and said, “You’re right, and let me tell you, it’s a pain in the ass, so can we work on making you more Xander-y so we can go back to our normal roles? Being the one pouting is so much more fun than being the one trying to do the cheering up.”
Laughing now, Xander said, “Great! Now I think you’re doing my job better than I am!”
“Come on, we need to get some donuts and ice cream and watch some stupid comedy movies,” Buffy offered.
“No chick flicks,” Xander warned with dark seriousness before his face cracked into a lopsided grin and he said, “Okay, maybe one chick flick if I get to choose a guy comedy.”
“I think we use that as a point of negotiation. Come on, let’s go get Willow and Giles,” Buffy said.
Rising unsteadily on still exhausted legs, Xander posed heroically and said, “To the library!”
Inquisitor Bella lay stripped and naked, a restraining collar about her neck as she lay in front of a council of her peers, who all stared down at her. She gritted her teeth against the pain of the past several weeks of poking and prodding and psychic contact as they had determined whether or not she had been tainted by her experience. Finally she would hear the decision that had been made. While she showed no fear of her fellows, Bella’s heart was clutched with terror. After all, she had been the one to call for this trial.
“Inquisitor Bella de Lancourt, you asked for a trial to test you for corruption after you claim to have had your soul removed from your body by foul sorceries. You have endured every test set before you with the honour and dignity befitting an Inquisitor… or the skill of a master liar. We now stand ready to deliver our judgement,” Lord Inquisitor Stamos declared. “Do you have anything to say?”
“My fate is in the hands of the Emperor, I shall not protest your decision either way,” Bella replied.
“Good. Then you should know that our testing shows that you have been affected by the foulness of Chaos sorcery,” Stamos said.
Hanging her head, Bella said, “Then I await execution.”
Stamos held up a hand and said, “You have been affected, but not tainted, there is a difference. Your story of being drawn against your will into the body of another has been confirmed by a Callidus Assassin who called for an emergency mission abort with a similar tale… and by a request to spare you from the Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels.”
Tears of joy began to well up in Bella’s eyes as she heard that. “Then my story…”
“It would seem that you are one of the most blessed people in all of His Imperial Majesty’s Imperium, if you truly did see Lord Sanguinius,” Stamos said, the barest hint of a smile creasing his ancient and deadly serious face.
“I expect that the Blood Angels will wish to speak with me then,” Bella asked.
“They do indeed. From this point onward all rights and privileges as an Inquisitor have been restored to you. Guards, please release the lady and give her something to restore some of her dignity,” Lord Stamos ordered and a pair of Inquisitorial storm troopers detached themselves from the shadows and went to release Lady Bella.
As she had her restraints removed and a sheet to cover herself, Bella let the hard look of an Inquisitor return to her eyes and she said, “I hope I will not sound presumptuous if I request the chance to get to the bottom of this, especially if it at all portends the return of Lord Sanguinius, or Emperor protect, the Archenemy Horus. I only wish I could have seen the end of their fight.”
“I would expect nothing less from you, and you will receive all the support we can muster. This event must not go unanswered. We will find this world and learn what importance it holds,” Lord Stamos said with absolute certainty.
Bella nodded. The Inquisition was going to find Sunnydale.
Man, Teal'c is awesome.
