Room 406 [Tuesday Evening] - NFB
[this is for V's journalism project and is being slow played via email. I'm posting what we've done so far and will continue to update as we complete it.]
Xander was just re-copying his notes for his own Journalism interview into something that *he* could decipher, let alone type up so that Spider could read it, when the knock came at his door. Glancing at the clock on his desk, he nodded and set his notebook aside, rising to open the door. "Hiya - welcome to my humble and vampire-free abode."
"Hey," Veronica said, entering the room, her cheeks faintly pink. “Look, about last night? I’m really sorry. I got bitten by a gremlin and I guess I lost all my inhibitions. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”
"Nah." Xander waved his hand and stepped aside to let her past him. "Gasted my flabber? Sure. But Lorne told me about the gremlin bite, and even if he hadn't, let's just say I am not unused to strange encounters involving girls and magic." He pulled out the chair from Angel's now-empty desk, offering it to her as he waved a hand towards the room itself. "Sorry it's not a more exciting locale, but trust me, you wouldn't want to visit Sunnydale. Between the giant snake crawling around town and the risk of turning purple on the trip over..."
Veronica looked relieved at his acceptance of her apology and sat down at the desk and pulled out her tablet from her bag. "From the little I've heard about Sunnydale, I can guarantee you I don't want to visit," she said. "All right, so boring stuff out of the way first. Full name and age?"
Xander sat back down in his own chair. "Xander Not-Telling-On-Pain-Of-Tickling Harris, age 19." He cleared his throat. "I'm sort of re-doing senior year. Not because I flunked - just, graduation kind of didn't happen at my school last year."
Veronica looked over at him. "Do I want to ask?"
"About the graduation, or the middle name? Because I'm up for the tickling if you wanted to test my resolve."
"I was referring to the graduation. But if you turn out to be really boring, I'll keep that tickling thing in mind," she teased.
"Now I don't know whether to try to be interesting or not," Xander said. "The graduation thing, well. Did I mention giant snake? Our Mayor turned into one. We didn't know the specifics ahead of time, but we did know he was up to something for graduation, so we made other plans."
"Wow, and I thought my town was bad. I have a feeling I may regret this, but tell me about Sunnydale."
Xander crossed one leg over the other and rested his elbows on it. "Sunnydale's... different." He snorted. "Or actually, not so different from here, on the weirdness scale. But different from *most* towns. It's built over a Hellmouth, which is this..." He spread his hands out. "Big hole into mega-evil."
Veronica looked up from her tablet, her eyes wide. "And when you say evil, you're talking about the supernatural kind, right?"
"I'm talking the 'big things with multiple heads and uncomfortably-phallic tentacles live inside it' kind, yeah. And it's like a natural electromagnet for other evil stuff. Vampires, demons, whatever other kind of creepies you can think up... it's like Boca on spring break for them."
"Okay, this might be a weird question, but do you have any supernatural abilities?"
"Nope." Xander shook his head. "Not that I know of. Some of my friends back home do, but the weirdest I get is that most of the girls I date seem to turn out to be insect-demons or mummies in disguise." He scratches the back of his head. "I did get a spell put *on* me once, that made me think I was in the army - our Halloween costumes came to life. And I still remember some of the stuff I knew about being a soldier, from that. But no hocus pocus of my own."
Veronica blinked. “Wow and I thought my track record was bad in the dating department. So was it hard for you being, for lack of a better term, normal in an environment like that?”
"Since my ex-girlfriend is not here to laugh herself sick at the sound of somebody referring to me as 'normal,' I should probably do it for her," Xander answered with a snort. He gave an experimental chuckle, then shook his head. "Nah, too much work. Was it hard having no super-spandex-powers, but still knowing about all the crazy stuff going down? I guess. Be nice to have been able to help more than just sharpening stakes, running for doughnuts, and falling asleep over the demon reference books. With the occasional possession or almost getting turned into a fish-monster thrown in."
“Fish monster?” she asked. “All this supernatural stuff is totally new to me. In my hometown the evil was completely human.”
"Oh, we had plenty of that, too," Xander assured her. "Never underestimate the power of humanity to give demons a run for their money in the being an asshole sweepstakes. Swim coach was human, for instance, and he still fed the team some kind of spelled steam that turned most of them into creatures from the black latrine. And the local kiddie league baseball coach didn't even bother with the supernatural stuff; he just whacked one of the kids on his team when they lost. Put him in a coma."
Veronica shook her head. "My best friend was murdered by her boyfriend's father," she told him. "Granted, she was having an affair with him and threatened to blackmail him with video tapes she found that he'd made, but still. I know all about the evils humans can inflict on each other. At least with demons and stuff, you know what expect."
Xander shrugged. "Not always, except for 'expect the unexpected.' Some people with powers, or who look freaky, aren't necessarily evil. My interview was with Ed Scissorhands, for instance, and you'd expect him to be pretty creepy, but he's actually a fairly normal guy, kinda shy."
"Oh, I'm not saying you can judge based on appearances. But if someone is a demon, it's a pretty good bet they're going to be up to no good," she said, thinking of her earlier conversation with Bel. "I am well aware of the gray areas in the good vs evil spectrum though."
Xander nodded. "Yeah, most of the demons I've met have been pretty firmly in the evil camp, or at least the don't care if we hurt people camp."
"So tell me what it was like growing up in a town where evil was so prevalent. Did you know about vampires and demons and witches when you were a kid? Did your family take special measures to keep you safe from all the weird stuff?"
This time Xander did laugh. Hard. Though it was that kind of laughter that sounds like it's giving its owner a sore throat and not a lot of actual amusement. "No-ot so much, no. Most people in Sunnydale pretend the weird stuff isn't happening. Kids. Gangs on PCP. Wave of sudden barbecue-fork accidents. To be honest I'm pretty sure my parents still don't believe there's anything bad going on in town."
"You're telling me that your mayor turned into a giant snake and people don't think there's anything weird going on in your town?" She looked at him with disbelief. "That almost makes me wonder if there's weird supernatural stuff in my town and people just ignore it."
"Could be," Xander said seriously. "I mean, Sunnydale's been Demon Central for centuries, and I didn't know anything about it until I happened to run into Buffy, sophomore year. Um, literally; I kind of knocked her down. And then there were stakes and vampires and one of our friends got killed, so it was kind of hard not to notice something strange was going on."
"You knew Buffy before you guys came to Fandom High?" she asked, her curiosity piqued.
"Sort of. The Buffy here is kind of... my Buffy but not quite? Seems like everybody from Sunnydale at Fandom High came from different times that's why Buffy's a junior here, but I'm a senior. She's a year younger than she was the last time I saw her."
Veronica gave him a puzzled look. "I really don't understand how that whole inter-dimensional thing works," she admitted. "Who else did you know before?"
"Er, Faith." Xander shifted slightly in his seat. "Angel. Us. Man with bad teeth and detachable soul. His buddies Drusilla and Spike. And Anya; I went to Prom with her, actually." He frowned. "Tara, the Ethics teacher? She came from Sunnydale too, but in my future; I don't know her, but she knows me. And Ms. Calendar, the new Psych teacher." He smiles. "Her, I'm really glad to see. Things didn't go so well for her back home."
"I haven't met Ms. Calendar officially, but I know she's going to be involved with the Investigator's Club. Tara is a sweetheart, though. I was disappointed to hear that she's not staying at Fandom High after this semester. " She looked down at her notepad. "Were you friends with Angel?"
"With Angel?" Xander's lips flattened and one side of his mouth curled up in something that wasn't a smile. "He was Buffy's boyfriend; I... managed not to kill him, and he viced the versa. Angelus... was not our friend."
"Yeah, I think we all figured out that one," she said. "So I guess you weren't surprised by... um... what happened?" she asked.
Xander's eyes darted towards the floor for a second; when he looked back up, his gaze was shadowed. "Yes and no? I wasn't surprised Angelus hurt somebody sooner or later; it's what he does. But I kind of let myself believe that they wouldn't have let him into the school if they didn't have some kind of control over him, so maybe all people had to do was be careful." He shook his head a bit disgustedly. "Sunnydale Syndrome coming through, I guess - kind of hoped I'd grown out of that."
"You were at the Investigator's Club meeting on Friday, right?"
Xander nodded. "Yeah, I was sitting by the Logan and Rory PG-13 Sexperience, all leather innuendo, all the time."
Veronica groaned at the mention of Logan and Rory. She didn't really want to think about them any more today. [and I haven't played out the morning after stuff with either of them yet, so I'll have to edit something appropriate in before I post.] "I somehow ended up in charge of the non-magical investigations," she said. "What are you going to be doing?"
"Carving stakes and buying doughnuts, probably," Xander answers with a rueful grin. "And whatever people need me to do, I guess."
"Did anyone tell you that we think Belthazor is actively trying to remove Angel's soul?"
Xander nodded. "Angel said he was up to something at the meeting, yeah. Do we know more than that now?"
"Phoebe had a premonition of Angelus trying to kill Tara. We know that Belthazor bought some books on soul magic at Phale's and Marty is trying to find out if he purchased anything resembling spell ingredients at the Emporium." She looked at him seriously. "We think he may try to use Buffy in whatever he's doing. I warned her to be cautious, but can you keep an eye on her?"
"Phoebe had a premonition of Angelus trying to kill Tara. We know that Belthazor bought some books on soul magic at Phale's and Marty is trying to find out if he purchased anything resembling spell ingredients at the Emporium." She looked at him seriously. "We think he may try to use Buffy in whatever he's doing. I warned her to be cautious, but can you keep an eye on her?"
"Yeah, of course. He's gonna be pretty disappointed if he thinks Buffy's ever going to risk getting used for that, though," Xander answered grimly. "She knows better. The hard way."
Veronica winced. "That's rough," she said, trying really hard to not think about her earlier conversation with Angel. Or about the time he answered the door in a towel. There may be a trace of a blush in her cheeks. "Um, just, keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary, which I understand is a frequent occurrence around here, and let someone in the club know if you think something is off, okay?"
"Will do." Xander nodded. Not thinking about Angel answering the door in a towel either. "Not that I see much of Angel around here he's pretty much moved out."
"He did move out. He lives on the second floor with John Crichton now. You didn't know that?"
"I knew he was there, yeah, and obviously his stuff's gone. Admin didn't bother to actually tell me I don't have a roommate anymore, though, so I wasn't sure how official it was."
"I can't believe no one told you," Veronica said, shaking her head. "It's totally official. We all went out and celebrated and everything."
Xander snorted. "Believe me, I did plenty of partying on my own - in ways that are not nearly as disturbing as that just sounded - when I figured out he was out of here, with or without the spiffy white dorm-change slip."
"All right, I gotta know, *how* did you two end up being roommates?"
"We kind
of got into it at enrollment," Xander said, "And Principal Connor thought it would be funny to send
us to hell for it. While I'm all in favor of the Angelus in hell scenario, I didn't really plan on being part of it., unless it was on the dull end of the stake that sent him there."
Veronica couldn't stop but chuckle. "Okay, I realize that's not funny for you. But I find it incredibly amusing."
Xander shrugged. "It probably kept me safer in the long run; if he was gonna kill anybody and try to get away with it, it wouldn't be his roommate, especially one who publicly hates him."
Xander was just re-copying his notes for his own Journalism interview into something that *he* could decipher, let alone type up so that Spider could read it, when the knock came at his door. Glancing at the clock on his desk, he nodded and set his notebook aside, rising to open the door. "Hiya - welcome to my humble and vampire-free abode."
"Hey," Veronica said, entering the room, her cheeks faintly pink. “Look, about last night? I’m really sorry. I got bitten by a gremlin and I guess I lost all my inhibitions. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”
"Nah." Xander waved his hand and stepped aside to let her past him. "Gasted my flabber? Sure. But Lorne told me about the gremlin bite, and even if he hadn't, let's just say I am not unused to strange encounters involving girls and magic." He pulled out the chair from Angel's now-empty desk, offering it to her as he waved a hand towards the room itself. "Sorry it's not a more exciting locale, but trust me, you wouldn't want to visit Sunnydale. Between the giant snake crawling around town and the risk of turning purple on the trip over..."
Veronica looked relieved at his acceptance of her apology and sat down at the desk and pulled out her tablet from her bag. "From the little I've heard about Sunnydale, I can guarantee you I don't want to visit," she said. "All right, so boring stuff out of the way first. Full name and age?"
Xander sat back down in his own chair. "Xander Not-Telling-On-Pain-Of-Tickling Harris, age 19." He cleared his throat. "I'm sort of re-doing senior year. Not because I flunked - just, graduation kind of didn't happen at my school last year."
Veronica looked over at him. "Do I want to ask?"
"About the graduation, or the middle name? Because I'm up for the tickling if you wanted to test my resolve."
"I was referring to the graduation. But if you turn out to be really boring, I'll keep that tickling thing in mind," she teased.
"Now I don't know whether to try to be interesting or not," Xander said. "The graduation thing, well. Did I mention giant snake? Our Mayor turned into one. We didn't know the specifics ahead of time, but we did know he was up to something for graduation, so we made other plans."
"Wow, and I thought my town was bad. I have a feeling I may regret this, but tell me about Sunnydale."
Xander crossed one leg over the other and rested his elbows on it. "Sunnydale's... different." He snorted. "Or actually, not so different from here, on the weirdness scale. But different from *most* towns. It's built over a Hellmouth, which is this..." He spread his hands out. "Big hole into mega-evil."
Veronica looked up from her tablet, her eyes wide. "And when you say evil, you're talking about the supernatural kind, right?"
"I'm talking the 'big things with multiple heads and uncomfortably-phallic tentacles live inside it' kind, yeah. And it's like a natural electromagnet for other evil stuff. Vampires, demons, whatever other kind of creepies you can think up... it's like Boca on spring break for them."
"Okay, this might be a weird question, but do you have any supernatural abilities?"
"Nope." Xander shook his head. "Not that I know of. Some of my friends back home do, but the weirdest I get is that most of the girls I date seem to turn out to be insect-demons or mummies in disguise." He scratches the back of his head. "I did get a spell put *on* me once, that made me think I was in the army - our Halloween costumes came to life. And I still remember some of the stuff I knew about being a soldier, from that. But no hocus pocus of my own."
Veronica blinked. “Wow and I thought my track record was bad in the dating department. So was it hard for you being, for lack of a better term, normal in an environment like that?”
"Since my ex-girlfriend is not here to laugh herself sick at the sound of somebody referring to me as 'normal,' I should probably do it for her," Xander answered with a snort. He gave an experimental chuckle, then shook his head. "Nah, too much work. Was it hard having no super-spandex-powers, but still knowing about all the crazy stuff going down? I guess. Be nice to have been able to help more than just sharpening stakes, running for doughnuts, and falling asleep over the demon reference books. With the occasional possession or almost getting turned into a fish-monster thrown in."
“Fish monster?” she asked. “All this supernatural stuff is totally new to me. In my hometown the evil was completely human.”
"Oh, we had plenty of that, too," Xander assured her. "Never underestimate the power of humanity to give demons a run for their money in the being an asshole sweepstakes. Swim coach was human, for instance, and he still fed the team some kind of spelled steam that turned most of them into creatures from the black latrine. And the local kiddie league baseball coach didn't even bother with the supernatural stuff; he just whacked one of the kids on his team when they lost. Put him in a coma."
Veronica shook her head. "My best friend was murdered by her boyfriend's father," she told him. "Granted, she was having an affair with him and threatened to blackmail him with video tapes she found that he'd made, but still. I know all about the evils humans can inflict on each other. At least with demons and stuff, you know what expect."
Xander shrugged. "Not always, except for 'expect the unexpected.' Some people with powers, or who look freaky, aren't necessarily evil. My interview was with Ed Scissorhands, for instance, and you'd expect him to be pretty creepy, but he's actually a fairly normal guy, kinda shy."
"Oh, I'm not saying you can judge based on appearances. But if someone is a demon, it's a pretty good bet they're going to be up to no good," she said, thinking of her earlier conversation with Bel. "I am well aware of the gray areas in the good vs evil spectrum though."
Xander nodded. "Yeah, most of the demons I've met have been pretty firmly in the evil camp, or at least the don't care if we hurt people camp."
"So tell me what it was like growing up in a town where evil was so prevalent. Did you know about vampires and demons and witches when you were a kid? Did your family take special measures to keep you safe from all the weird stuff?"
This time Xander did laugh. Hard. Though it was that kind of laughter that sounds like it's giving its owner a sore throat and not a lot of actual amusement. "No-ot so much, no. Most people in Sunnydale pretend the weird stuff isn't happening. Kids. Gangs on PCP. Wave of sudden barbecue-fork accidents. To be honest I'm pretty sure my parents still don't believe there's anything bad going on in town."
"You're telling me that your mayor turned into a giant snake and people don't think there's anything weird going on in your town?" She looked at him with disbelief. "That almost makes me wonder if there's weird supernatural stuff in my town and people just ignore it."
"Could be," Xander said seriously. "I mean, Sunnydale's been Demon Central for centuries, and I didn't know anything about it until I happened to run into Buffy, sophomore year. Um, literally; I kind of knocked her down. And then there were stakes and vampires and one of our friends got killed, so it was kind of hard not to notice something strange was going on."
"You knew Buffy before you guys came to Fandom High?" she asked, her curiosity piqued.
"Sort of. The Buffy here is kind of... my Buffy but not quite? Seems like everybody from Sunnydale at Fandom High came from different times that's why Buffy's a junior here, but I'm a senior. She's a year younger than she was the last time I saw her."
Veronica gave him a puzzled look. "I really don't understand how that whole inter-dimensional thing works," she admitted. "Who else did you know before?"
"Er, Faith." Xander shifted slightly in his seat. "Angel. Us. Man with bad teeth and detachable soul. His buddies Drusilla and Spike. And Anya; I went to Prom with her, actually." He frowned. "Tara, the Ethics teacher? She came from Sunnydale too, but in my future; I don't know her, but she knows me. And Ms. Calendar, the new Psych teacher." He smiles. "Her, I'm really glad to see. Things didn't go so well for her back home."
"I haven't met Ms. Calendar officially, but I know she's going to be involved with the Investigator's Club. Tara is a sweetheart, though. I was disappointed to hear that she's not staying at Fandom High after this semester. " She looked down at her notepad. "Were you friends with Angel?"
"With Angel?" Xander's lips flattened and one side of his mouth curled up in something that wasn't a smile. "He was Buffy's boyfriend; I... managed not to kill him, and he viced the versa. Angelus... was not our friend."
"Yeah, I think we all figured out that one," she said. "So I guess you weren't surprised by... um... what happened?" she asked.
Xander's eyes darted towards the floor for a second; when he looked back up, his gaze was shadowed. "Yes and no? I wasn't surprised Angelus hurt somebody sooner or later; it's what he does. But I kind of let myself believe that they wouldn't have let him into the school if they didn't have some kind of control over him, so maybe all people had to do was be careful." He shook his head a bit disgustedly. "Sunnydale Syndrome coming through, I guess - kind of hoped I'd grown out of that."
"You were at the Investigator's Club meeting on Friday, right?"
Xander nodded. "Yeah, I was sitting by the Logan and Rory PG-13 Sexperience, all leather innuendo, all the time."
Veronica groaned at the mention of Logan and Rory. She didn't really want to think about them any more today. [and I haven't played out the morning after stuff with either of them yet, so I'll have to edit something appropriate in before I post.] "I somehow ended up in charge of the non-magical investigations," she said. "What are you going to be doing?"
"Carving stakes and buying doughnuts, probably," Xander answers with a rueful grin. "And whatever people need me to do, I guess."
"Did anyone tell you that we think Belthazor is actively trying to remove Angel's soul?"
Xander nodded. "Angel said he was up to something at the meeting, yeah. Do we know more than that now?"
"Phoebe had a premonition of Angelus trying to kill Tara. We know that Belthazor bought some books on soul magic at Phale's and Marty is trying to find out if he purchased anything resembling spell ingredients at the Emporium." She looked at him seriously. "We think he may try to use Buffy in whatever he's doing. I warned her to be cautious, but can you keep an eye on her?"
"Phoebe had a premonition of Angelus trying to kill Tara. We know that Belthazor bought some books on soul magic at Phale's and Marty is trying to find out if he purchased anything resembling spell ingredients at the Emporium." She looked at him seriously. "We think he may try to use Buffy in whatever he's doing. I warned her to be cautious, but can you keep an eye on her?"
"Yeah, of course. He's gonna be pretty disappointed if he thinks Buffy's ever going to risk getting used for that, though," Xander answered grimly. "She knows better. The hard way."
Veronica winced. "That's rough," she said, trying really hard to not think about her earlier conversation with Angel. Or about the time he answered the door in a towel. There may be a trace of a blush in her cheeks. "Um, just, keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary, which I understand is a frequent occurrence around here, and let someone in the club know if you think something is off, okay?"
"Will do." Xander nodded. Not thinking about Angel answering the door in a towel either. "Not that I see much of Angel around here he's pretty much moved out."
"He did move out. He lives on the second floor with John Crichton now. You didn't know that?"
"I knew he was there, yeah, and obviously his stuff's gone. Admin didn't bother to actually tell me I don't have a roommate anymore, though, so I wasn't sure how official it was."
"I can't believe no one told you," Veronica said, shaking her head. "It's totally official. We all went out and celebrated and everything."
Xander snorted. "Believe me, I did plenty of partying on my own - in ways that are not nearly as disturbing as that just sounded - when I figured out he was out of here, with or without the spiffy white dorm-change slip."
"All right, I gotta know, *how* did you two end up being roommates?"
"We kind
of got into it at enrollment," Xander said, "And Principal Connor thought it would be funny to send
us to hell for it. While I'm all in favor of the Angelus in hell scenario, I didn't really plan on being part of it., unless it was on the dull end of the stake that sent him there."
Veronica couldn't stop but chuckle. "Okay, I realize that's not funny for you. But I find it incredibly amusing."
Xander shrugged. "It probably kept me safer in the long run; if he was gonna kill anybody and try to get away with it, it wouldn't be his roommate, especially one who publicly hates him."