Star Trek-Outwardly Mobile
One of us
By
Jay P Hailey
2002
"You're not one of them, Buffy." Selene said. The older woman whipped through a spinning, swirling kata, filled with kicks and circular blows.
Buffy blocked all the attacks and then swam in, putting her hips into the counter attack "Oh?" Buffy had a moment of split personality, one side fighting a fast, clever and strong martial artist, she was pushing to keep up. The other side holding a casual conversation.
Buffy carefully didn't over think this, but just went with the flow. Selene dodged and blocked Buffy's power attack and danced away. "You know better."
"I know I am going to kick your ass." Buffy said pursuing her.
Selene stopped suddenly and caught Buffy's fist in a complicated loop. Buffy found herself flying through the air and landing hard on her back.
"Not today, young one." Selene said. "See, I'm like you."
Buffy was rolling to avoid the counter attack and then kipped to her feet. "I don't think so. For one thing you're dressed like, totally 1995. For another, I'm not fat."
Selene breathed deeply and her expression betrayed some irritation. "I am stronger, tougher, and more intelligent, Buffy. So are you."
Buffy stepped into Selene and kicked, again and again. Selene stepped away at an angle dodging these attacks. "You're too used to fighting them. The Normals. The rabble. You depend on your strength too heavily."
Buffy got closer and launched a punch from her hips.
Selene caught the punch. And held it. "You're not using all of your gifts and you are holding back."
Buffy pushed as if resisting and then suddenly turned and converted the show of strength into a throw. Selene flew over her hip and landed hard on the ground herself.
"When you get near a point, let me know." Buffy said casually.
Selene flowed off the ground and back into a ready position. "Join us."
"As if."
"Buffy, you're not part of this world, and you've always known it. There are more of us. And men, Buffy. Real men. Men who can lift almost a ton while doing quadratic equations in their heads. Not the idiotic, weak boys that populate this world and look for someone to mother them." Selene said.
Buffy pressed the attack "If they dress as bad as you, I am not interested."
Selene met the attack with a counter attack of her own. Buffy and Selene wound up tied up in a knot, each without enough balance to throw the other. "This offer won't be open to you much longer. We know you confronted Glory. We know it was you who killed her. We attribute this to ignorance."
Buffy went limp and then converted the motion into a roll. Selene tried to counter and this ended up with both women hitting the ground hard.
Buffy scrambled up wincing. Selene was slightly less graceful and her face held concentration.
"I kicked Glory's ass because she was hurting people. It's what I do. I didn't kill anyone." Buffy said. "I'm not interested in your little secret club."
Selene looked at her carefully. "You're not lying, you didn't kill Glory."
"Nooo." Buffy said slowly "I kicked her ass because she was messing with my town."
Selene stepped back and into a more relaxed position. "Then one of your companions did."
Buffy relaxed and took a deep breath "What's your point?"
"They killed her because she frightened them, Buffy. She was so much stronger than they are. She was so much faster. After you made her vulnerable they had to take her out before she recovered and was once again beyond their reach." Selene said. "How long before they do it to you?"
"After I massacre a few dozen more people, maybe." Buffy sneered.
Selene smiled "Think about it." She turned and began walking away.
-*-
**You're not one of them, Willow.** The voice was soft and lilting in Willow's head.
Concentrating was difficult. They were in the middle of a battle. The Mall patrons had glassy eyes and slack faces, but they fought like people possessed. Which they were.
The rest of the Scoobies fought them trying to keep them away from Willow while she concentrated.
The opposing mind flipped through Willows memories - her friends and the tastes of her friend's minds. Buffy, stronger and tougher than anyone had a right to expect, but glib and oblivious about it all. Giles the Watcher, holder of ancient secrets. Angel, a man more than two hundred years old. And Xander, her oldest and dearest friend.
**They all have one thing in common,** the opposing mind said, **None of them can see what you and I see. They barely exist at a level you and I master.**
Willow threw a bolt of telepathic force against her opponent. The opposing mind grunted with the impact. Willow hit the opposing mind again, and was rewarded with more pain. **What do you want?" She demanded of her opponent "What do these people have to do with it?**
Almost unbidden the image of something skittered across the opposing mind. Some artifact or other. A half whisper of the legends surrounding it. More clearly - the Picture of the opposing mind using the people of the Mall as tools to dig it out.
**No,** Willow said sternly and launched another attack into the opposing mind. The opposing mind turned and with breath taking skill turned Willow's attack back on her. Her whole brain seemed to deform and wobble with the force of the blow. Willow gasped and sank to one knee.
The sound of a brawl, a riot over took her. "Willow, Stay focused. I know you can do it." Buffy said.
Buffy's faith in her bolstered Willow. She gathered herself and returned to the mental level.
**She knows you can do what exactly?** The opposing mind yelled. **Don't you see? She has no idea what you are, who you are. Our minds and this world may as well be magic to her!**
Willow didn't hesitate. She set herself and attacked with fury. **Abracabra,** she hissed.
Blow after blow fell like psionic hammers. Willow was just throwing raw energy into her opponent's mind.
The opposing mind fell, curled into a ball around pain. Willow gasping, struck twice more, hard, just to make sure.
Willow's eyes opened slowly. There was a roaring in her ears, but it was her own pulse. She looked around. All the civilians in the mall, taken over mentally and used as pawns were reacting as normal - collapsing and dealing with the physical energy drain, or the mental discontinuity that such control imposed. They'd wake up hung over with varying memories of their captivities - most would remember it as a nightmare, quickly forgotten. The brain was good at that.
Willow felt a tickle on her upper lip. She dabbed and came away with blood. Again.
-*-
Angel and Giles hauled the small man out of the access hallway. Already the victims of the mental attack and the brawl were rolling on the floor, groaning.
Xander came back with the tapes from the Security system "The Security Guards were still out cold, go figure."
"Good. Let's get out of here." Giles said.
As they walked out of the Mall dragging their victim he looked up. He was wearing a janitor's uniform, his name was Jose.
Willow was walking slowly, her body in fine shape but her mind bruised. Jose looked up at her. She saw the powerful being in the unimpressive shell.
**You're so strong.** Jose's mental voice was a whisper. **I know people. I could show you things. Training, a mental world the likes of which you have never seen. There are thousands of us, Willow. Don't keep yourself alone in the dark.**
Images flowed though his communication, too. Willow saw the image of telepathic groupings of people who didn't fight, who communicated with each other in friendship. Willow sighed at the thought. Underlying it all was a sneering disdain for normals, "Mundanes" as they were called. All Willow had to do was let go and she'd find herself a princess among people who understood her. All she had to do was let go.
Buffy punched Jose with a short, sharp jab in the face. His head snapped back and then lolled forward. "Knock it off!" Buffy snarled.
Willow looked up with surprise at her friend.
"It looked like he was putting some sort of whammy on you." Buffy explained.
"Yeah," Willow smiled weakly "A whammy."
-*-
The swords flashed in short precise arcs, and met with a harsh metallic sound and sparks.
Angel finished the pass and returned to ready position, facing Spike.
"You're not one of them, you know." Spike said.
"I don't recall giving you permission to choose my friends for me." Angel said.
Springing forward with blinding speed, both Immortals made another pass. Angel read Spike's pass perfectly, the swords once again met and cancelled each other.
"Before you know it, they'll be gray, fat and as resentful as hell that you don't have to suffer it with them. It's happened before." Spike said, his breath coming more deeply.
"That's tomorrow. I'm not worried about it." Angel said
"Tomorrow is all you and I have. It's what we are." Spike said.
Angel sprang and feinted, attacking Spike's legs.
Spike saw it coming and countered it with a flashy spin of his sword.
They danced apart and resumed ready positions.
"Aren't you tired of it?" Angel asked. "It's an endless, eternal game of 'Hey Cletus watch this' with no point or reason or rhyme. I want my existence to mean something."
"Oh, you mean something to me, Sweetness." Spike sneered.
Angel set himself. Spike liked to sneer as he went in for a kill. They sprang.
Angel barely read the attack and had to adjust his defensive spin as he moved. The sword struck solidly, the shock of the blow traveling up Angel's arm.
They parted and slid to ready position facing each other.
Spike felt his right arm. He had a cut and was bleeding from his shoulder. He grinned. "You're always good sword practice."
Angel felt a trickle down the side of his face. He dabbed. Blood. Spike nicked his scalp.
"Sunnydale is mine," Angel breathed deeply. "Keep you idiot little schemes and your thugs out of here."
"You'll get bored. Your Scooby Gang will get old and tired," Spike said, "You'll come back."
"Not me. I'm done with it." Angel replied.
"What'll I tell Darla?" Spike said, grinning.
"I don't know, what will you tell Druscilla?" Angel asked.
Spike's smile became wry. "As if they don't tell each other everything anyway."
Angel reflected back on a century of co-dependent madness. Boredom taken to kinky extremes. Then to violent extremes. Then to psychotic extremes. All looking for some spark, some reaction to let them know they were still alive.
"You're welcome to them." Angel said.
Spike shook his head. "I give you twenty years. Maybe thirty, tops."
"Until then, stay out of my town." Angel said.
Spike turned. "I'll run my business as suits me, pet. You keep an eye on your ox and your brain twister, eh? I'd hate to have to do them in before you were finished with them."
Watching Spike walk out the door Angel sighed. Time flowed slowly but inexorably onward. It would have its way no matter what.
-*-
Sipping brandy from a snifter, Giles quietly took in the smell of the old books, the cigars and the essence.
Carstairs sat across from him. "The Council is becoming worried."
"Oh?"
The older Watcher looked through Giles with the eyes of experience. Idly Giles wondered if he wasn't an immortal himself. But no, he'd aged visibly in the past fifteen years. "You're becoming too attached to this group of yours."
"Am I?"
"Don't patronize me, Giles." Carstairs barked. "You've known we were concerned for quite some time."
Giles looked at his former mentor blandly. "We have successfully dealt with more events than anyone since the London group of the 1890s."
"It's not our job to cope with things. Our name is the watcher's council, not the coping council."
Giles peered into his glass. "I have to live in Sunnydale myself. Come to think of it, I have to live on the planet Earth, as well."
Carstairs glared.
"Is there something wrong with my reporting?"
Carstairs took a waiting folder from the end table. "Larstein thinks you're being biased in favor of your people."
"Larstein hates his subjects and everyone knows it. He views being a watcher as an adversarial relationship." Giles said.
"If we mixed him and you, we'd have perfect balance." Carstairs sprung his trap.
Giles looked away with a surly expression.
"This Buffy Summers," Carstairs paged through the file. "She's an unrecognized Augment."
"Yes. I believe she doesn't know, herself."
"From your records, there seems to be a lot she doesn't know." Carstairs said.
Giles raised his eyebrows at his mentor, refusing to be baited.
"How can you be sure she's not playing you for a fool? I'm told they're good at that." Carstairs asked.
Giles dipped his head "You'd really have to know her. Besides I have made known my assertion-"
"That she's a type -B Augment, for whom the genetic change wasn't as thorough, yes, yes, yes Giles." Carstairs waved away Giles argument.
"I have supported the assertion as well. Her whole history before moving to Sunnydale is consistent. She's very strong, but mentally she's. normal." Giles said.
"Whatever that means." Carstairs sniffed.
Giles couldn't help but agree with that sentiment.
"And this Willow Rosenberg." Carstairs flipped to another page.
"She's a Telepath, yes." Giles said.
"And you're certain that she's not manipulating you?"
"Perhaps you could have one of our own telepaths check me over to see. If you can trust your own telepaths." Giles said mildly.
Carstairs closed the folder. "Rupert. This could go poorly for you. Your future in the Watcher's council is at stake."
"You seem to have already made up your mind." Giles said.
"That you're too close to these people, yes, in fact, I have." Carstairs said.
"And what does the rest of the Council have to say?" Giles looked at his old mentor coldly.
Carstairs leaned forward, his voice intense "Our objectivity is one of our primary tools, Giles. Our minds are all we have to fight the forces that the universe is throwing at us."
Giles nodded slowly "I see." He stood up. "Good day, Carstairs."
"You may be on the verge of throwing away your whole life's work." Carstairs said.
"You wouldn't be trying to convince me if you already had the votes in the council to remove me." Giles said briskly. "If that were the case, you'd have already lowered the boom."
"I am thinking of what's best for you and what's best for the Order." Carstairs snarled.
Giles simply turned and walked away.
"It's only a matter of time." Carstairs warned.
Giles kept walking without looking back.
-*-
There were a lot of them. They all wore some variant of a fist raised up, in
a similar style.
Xander fought the urge to panic. "Hey, Guys."
"Xander." Boxer leaned over Xander. At 6'4" and 300 pounds he had all the height and reach he needed. "We need to know."
"Know what?" Xander's voice almost didn't break.
"Where are you at, man?"
"I am surrounded by fierce looking people outside Shecky's Pizza." Xander explained.
"You may not understand. We all know of you. We've all looked up to you." Boxer said it in such a way as to put a heavy weight of responsibility on Xander's shoulders.
Xander totally failed to get it. "Huh?" He looked around at the people bracing him. There maybe twenty of them. About half of them he recognized from school.
"We looked up to you." Boxer said. "Sunnydale High School is a small place. We know Willow's a head case. We know Buffy's a monster. We know there's something weird about that guy in the black coat. And the punker with the spiked out do. But you have been hanging in with them all along. When the terrorists took over the school, The monster fought, and the head case fought. But we were all impressed that you were in there fighting, too."
"Uh, well, listen." Xander was caught between feeling very complimented and resenting hearing his closest friends described as a head case and a monster. "Where the hell were you?"
"We were watching and learning." Boxer said. "There's some ugly stuff happening. The government wants to keep it secret, but if you're tricky and keep your eye open, you learn things."
"Grammar? " Xander guessed "Diplomacy?"
"Xander, you're not one of them. Why are you down with them?" Boxer asked.
"They're my friends." Xander said. It was like trying to explain gravity.
"They're not human beings." Boxer said.
"That's not true." Xander protested
"A human being can't read your mind!" Boxer snarled "A human being can't pull a fire door out of the wall. A human being doesn't get half blown up and show up without a scratch the next day."
"Well, where the hell were you when High School started?" Xander demanded. "People like you wouldn't give me the time of day! I wasn't cool."
Boxer looked at Xander like he'd lost his mind.
"Yeah there's some creepy stuff out there but I didn't go out to find it. It found me because of who my friends were. And if I don't cover my friends' backs then I won't have any friends any more." Xander said. "Then you have to look in the mirror and ask 'who am I really'. When we heard there was some sort of blob eating things out on route 21, we didn't say 'what's in it for me' or 'what color is this blob'. We went out there because we're the ones to do it, and if I didn't I'd have to face it tomorrow that I ran away." Xander explained. "All I'm doing is faking my way through not being a coward, and hoping nobody hears me wimpering."
"Join us, Xander." Boxer said. "We have more back up. We've been training and fighting some. We're going to clear this town out and make it safe for humans again."
Xander blinked. "Oh, my god, it's you. You're the guys who beat up old man Wildermere, and that homeless girl."
"Old Wildermere cleared a 13 foot fence and put three of my guys in the hospital." Boxer snarled. "That homeless girl had us beating up each other for half an hour!"
"Hmmm. Could this be a clue that maybe this whole, run around and exterminate different folks isn't such a good plan?" Xander asked. "There's weird people out there who aren't doing anything wrong!"
Boxer stared harshly at Xander for a few moments. "You're either with us or against us, Xander. When the time comes to put your pals the non-humans down, if you're next to them, you'll go down, too."
Xander's heart thundered in his chest. Would they beat him up right here? His voice almost didn't quaver. "Nope. I don't buy it."
After an eternity, Boxer turned and walked away. His group followed him.
After they were out of sight, Xander sat down and dealt with a bad case of the shakes and cold sweats.
-*-
The lights were low. The smell of fresh popcorn wafted through the house.
Willow, Buffy and Xander curled up on the couch underneath a blanket. Angel lolled on the floor
"What's on first?" Xander asked.
Giles pushed his glasses up his nose "An American Classic, your one contribution to the culture of the world, Galaxy Quest Two, the Wrath of Zog." He pressed the button his remote control and the TV came to life.
As the stirring strains of the Galaxy Quest theme rolled across the living room, The popcorn was passed around and each of the people in the room luxuriated in the feeling of being at home.
The feeling of belonging.
-end-
Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this story for me.
This story posted by permission of the author. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Oct 24, 2005