Walk the Line (A Buffy/Animorphs Self-Insert fic)

[~]

(This is a self insert in the same vein as Claire's Heroes fic, but instead of just one show it's a show and a book.)

Gelatin Based Demonoids (Or Why I'm Screwed)

Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy or Animorphs, I only own myself.

~~~~~~

I sat in the cafeteria mindlessly poking this week's blue jello, which I was pretty sure was the same batch of blue jello that they'd served last month. Not that it mattered much normally, it being jello and all, but after a month of sitting on a Hellmouth who knows what might happen. Maybe it would mutate and become some sort of gelatin based demonoid, who planned to take over the world using a Hellmouth powered army of strangely shaped jello monsters.

Then again it was possible that it would just continue being jello.

My name is Dylan, and malevolent jello isn't my real problem. My real problem stems from two very blonds with superpowers who were sitting at opposite ends of the cafeteria. The first was Buffy Summers, Slayer of the Vampyres and, more recently, teen angst. She'd just started working as the school counselor at the new Sunnydale High and apparently no one had bothered to tell her where the employee lounge was, much to the dismay of one Dawn Summers.

Now I know what you're thinking, 'so what, you're in Sunnydale, big deal', but I haven't gotten to the best part. See the other blond I mentioned was desperately trying to explain the concept of shopping for pleasure to her best friend. See these two were the real problem, because their names were Rachel and Cassie, and along with the two guys sitting at the table next to mine, a bird, and an alien, they fought a secret guerilla war against mind controlling alien slugs called yeerks.

That's right, I'm stuck in an Animorphs/Buffyverse crossover.

Of course this pales in comparison to the fact that I'm stuck back in the senior year of High School, and I have a math test in five minutes that I haven't studied for.

Hooray.

[Phoenix004]

Cool idea Jax, would like to see more of this.

[~]

(I meant to post this earlier, oh well.)

Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst

~~~~~

For the record none of this is my fault.
Well, mostly not my fault.
Okay, fine, it was all my fault.

See I go to pTEC- I mean went to pTEC for television production. It's a really great program and on occasion we get a chance to get real payed work in the industry. Most of the jobs are for football games, which aren't exactly my thing, but sometime we get the odd request for a commercial or a wedding. As it so happened someone came in asking for both. The name she gave was Raven Moonshine, or something new age-y like that, and she had built a business around performing wiccan weddings. No one really wanted to do another wedding, and I could use the money, so I jumped on it. I figured no harm could come from taping a pretty simple ceremony.

That, of course, was my first mistake. Sure the ceremony itself was a simple backyard affair, and I got some great shots despite having to work alone. The problem came when the groom insisted on me having some drinks with him. Being the smart young man that I am, I said no. Then he asked if I was sure and the college kid that I am shoved the smart young me to the ground and said "Beer!". I managed to get as far as my third drink before I started making bad decisions. See the groom happened to be really cute, and was definitely flirting with me as he plied me with alcohol. I hadn't even started my fourth when we were suddenly making out on his couch. That's about the time his new bride walked in.

But wait, it gets worse. I was rather plastered at this point and decided that I was going to argue with the bride. I don't remember exactly what I said, but among the words that came out of my mouth were Pathetic, Fake, wannabe, and couldn't please your man. Like I said, all my fault. She grabbed some spices from her cupboard, said something in Latin and threw the stuff in my face.

Next thing I remember my alarm going off and my head is threatening to explode. I drove to school on autopilot, not really paying attention to what was going on around me, and before I knew it I was standing outside of Sunnydale High with my jaw on the floor. Some of the fog lifted in my brain and I realized something even freakier. I remembered going here, and I was late for my History class.

~~~~~

I was still kind of reeling from seeing Rachel at lunch but I figured I was probably just jumping to conclusions because I was stressed from realizing I was in the Buffyverse. I tried to calm myself with the fact the the blond girl hadn't looked like Brook Nevin, but that didn't help much since my mental image of Rachel had been from the books.

As I sat in English class and tried to sort things out starting with what I knew. I managed to work out that I was 17 again and a senior at Sunnydale High. I knew about vampires because I'd been saved from two of them last year by Spike of all people. Unlike my regular time line I had never met my best friend, Ashley, which was kind of disappointing because I was curious about what her major fandom was in a world without a Buffy. Without the show that is.

"Mr. Loring." Mrs. Roth said, bringing me out of my thoughts. She was an older woman, probably in her 50's, but she had aged quite gracefully with her naturally blond hair only somewhat grayed. "Since you seem to have a firm enough grasp on the subject to daydream in my classroom, I'm sure you can tell me what Frost's 'Stopping by Woods' is about." I gulped, realizing that the whole class was staring at me.

"Well," I started nervously. "Most people say that Frost is using sleep as a metaphor for death, but from the pattern of the words it seems to me that he is literally talking about sleep. The speaker is clearly tired from a long journey and his lack of sleep is affecting how he views the world, giving the poem a dreamlike feel by using romantic words like Dark and Deep to describe the woods." I realized everyone in the class was giving me a look like that said I had completely missed the point. I cringed inwardly and braced for the inevitable put down, followed by detention.

"Very good Dylan. It seems you have been paying attention." Mrs. Roth said. I was kind of shocked, from her tone it seemed like she was actually pleased with my answer. I silently thanked the universe that I had taken regular college courses before going to tech school. Mrs. Roth started into a lecture about how sometimes there is no deeper meaning in literature and everyone else in the class alternated between desperately taking notes and shooting me dirty looks. Ha, screw them, they were just jealous.

~~~~~

By the end of the day I had firmly stomped down any nagging doubts that I was in a crossover with Animorphs. It was a big relief because vampires and demons were bad enough, I really didn't need brain controlling alien slugs to the mix. I was on my way to my car, ready to start working on exactly how I was going to deal with my situation, when Mrs. Roth approached me.

"Dylan, good, I wanted to speak with you before you left." She said.

"What about?" I asked, I really hoped she didn't want me to be her TA for her sophomore class because I really didn't want to and if she asked I would have to say yes. I'm not so good with the guilt.

"You don't usually drift off like that in class. If you don't mind me asking is everything alright at home?" I actually had to think about that for a second, after all I hadn't even seen my mother today. After a quick check of my new memories however I found that nothing had changed from my original time line.

"Me and mom just moved into my grandparent's house. Unpacking has just been taking a lot out of me." The best part was that it was true so no need to remember my story.

"Well if you need to talk to someone I'm here, and I'm sure Miss Summers would love to help too. Have a nice weekend, I'll see you Monday." With that she turned to walk to the faculty parking lot and I started back towards my car.

"Oh, one more thing." Mrs. Roth said. I turned around and prepared to turn down the TA position as politely as possible. "There is a Sharing meeting at the beach tomorrow for prospective members. I think it might be good for you." And with that she turned again and walked off while I stood their trying desperately not to pass out.

"Well crap." I muttered.

[Phoenix004]

Nice chapter Jax, interesting way of introducing your character to the Buffyverse, lol. Looking forward to seeing more!

[~]

(I have about as much an idea of what's going to happen as my self-insert does, this either means the fic will seem more realistic or crazy. But hey, this is RAF...)

BBQ = 'Bring Bad Questions'

So I went to the barbecue. What? I like barbecue, especially free barbecue, and it's not like the yeerks just randomly drag people off from the new member meetings. I mean that would be counter productive, right?

Right?

Well bad decision or not I was at the Barbecue mingling and figuring out which guys were on the field, so to speak. And controllers obviously, I had so far picked out at least seven. Controllers that is, though 2 probably joined the Sharing because they were in the closet and couldn't cope. Anyway gay controllers aside the party was rather great. The barbecue was amazing, there was a wide variety of music that was actually good, and there was at least one cute guy who I was fairly certain wasn't a controller. I'd keep an eye on him just incase, but it would be nice to have a normal boyfriend and I found myself thinking wistfully about it after we set a date for Sunday.

Of course I was so distracted thinking about the possible normality that I ran right into someone and spilled my drink on their back.

"Oh crap! I'm so sorry, let me get you some nap-" The girl turned around and my brain stopped.

"It's alright, it's not that bad." It was true, I'd only had a little water in my cup. Of course that didn't change the fact that my brain was still stuck in disbelief mode. Apparently my inability to form a coherent thought showed on my face. "Are you ok?"

"You're Dawn." I blurted. Yes, great way to make an impression on the canon.

"Yeah, and your Dylan." She said slowly. She knew my name. Why did she- My brain chose that moment to kick back into gear. Right, yes, she was in Mrs. Roth's class. Of course she'd know who I was.

"Sorry, off day. You come here often?"

"Are.. Are you hitting on me?"Crap. Okay, I needed to fix this fast before word spread to Buffy, the last thing I needed was the Slayer thinking I was hitting her sister. But how could I do it gently? "If you are I'm not complaining, it's just that I heard this rumor and-"

"I'm gay." Oh yeah. Totally gentle.

"Oh, well okay." Dawn said. If I didn't know better it sounded like there was a slight bit of disappointment in her voice. Is it bad that that made me feel a little better about myself?

"Yeah, um, sorry. What I meant was do you come to the Sharing often? Cause this is my first time." Alright, now we were back on track. If Dawn was a controller then the yeerks would not only have access to info about the supernatural, but they would also have the Key which was not a good thing no matter which way you sliced it. And that really is a poor choice of words now that I think about it.

"I've been too a couple meetings, but it's not really my thing. I'm really just here for the food." She said.

"Oh, cool, me too. Mrs. Roth thought I might need help coping with stuff." I said.

"Yeah, my sister made me start coming after our mom died awhile ago. It was a rough time, and the support really helped especially that summer." Translation, 'When Buffy died'. "But they started getting really pushy on being a full member. It got kind of creepy so I stopped coming for awhile."

"They are a little bit on the cultish side." I agreed. This was good news. At least one Scooby was yeerk free, but that lead to my other problem. With my luck one of the other WAS a controller, and I needed to find out for sure before I let them in on everything. The problem was I couldn't keep watch on them for 3 days straight, but I did know someone who could.

[Phoenix004]

Cool post Jax, I wonder any of the gang will turn out to be a Controller?

I like that you mention possibly gay Sharing members. In the books they often say that people of any orientation are welcome but as far as I can recall no gay Sharing members are ever mentioned. This way you're adding to the realism of the situation.

[~]

(I like that you think I was making a statement or was trying to add realism, but really it's just so I can give my insert a boyfriend without getting killed by Rachel for stealing Tobias. Of course it won't be that simple, but still.)

Finding Your Target Audience

By the time I was done talking with Dawn I had a plan. It was crazy, like really crazy, but hey I'm like Jack Sparrow, crazy usually works for me. Before I could move on with my plan I needed supplies, but I had two problems. One, the only magic shop in town was in shambles. That meant that if I was going to pull off my little plan I was going to need to break in. That's right, I was going to break into the Magic Box. It wouldn't be hard, I just had to be in and out as quickly as possible with the supplies I needed.

Of course all of that would be pointless if I couldn't find Erek. While I was pretty sure I could execute my plan alone, it would take me quite some time. Time wasn't exactly something I had a lot of seeing as Help was going to start next week and I planned on saving Cassie Newton. As I scanned the party something else occurred to me. I had no idea what Erek looked like. That meant I would have to ask someone. Well that wouldn't be awkward-

"He's over there by the punch." I stopped in my tracks. That was Buffy's voice. I was about to turn around when a second voice joined in.

"Are you sure? The kid looks pretty normal to me Buff." Xander said.

"I'm telling you, something's off about that Erek kid."

"Alright, so what's your plan? Walk over and ask him if he's evil?"

"Maybe..."

"Gotta say Buff, you've had better plans."

"Fine. But I'm keeping an eye on him."

"Right, you do that. Meantime I'll get the Dawnster home."

"Thanks Xander." Buffy said. I hadn't been very far from the two, I guess they'd just gotten used to Sunnydale Syndrome and assumed no one was paying attention. Lucky for me it seemed to apply in reverse and they didn't seem to notice me noticing them. Which was actually kind of a let down because it might have been fun to see an improvised cover up in real life. At any rate I knew who Erek was now, all I had to do was convince him that he could trust me. It took me all of two seconds to get to the punch bowl, then another coule before I worked up the nerve to say something.

"I love dogs, don't you?"

[Phoenix004]

lol, I'm not surprised by your reasoning, just pointing out that it also adds to the realism.

I get why you'd need Erek on your side, but I wonder what you need to break into the Magic Box for...

[~]

(It'd be nice to know if anyone else reads this...)

Jax in the Box

I chose the perfect sentence to start talking to Erek, not that that was all that surprising really. We ended up talking for a really long time, in fact by the party was pretty much over by the time I bothered to look around. I was slightly worried, one because full members were the ones who had to clean up, and two because I was 17 again and mom might not want me out so late. Checking my phone I saw that not only was it late, it was after midnight.

And yet I had no missed calls.

"Guess mom doesn't care that I could be lying in a ditch." I told Erek with a smirk. He smirked back and an odd thought went trough my head. I pushed the thought away before it had a chance to take hold and retuned my focus to why I'd started talking to him in the first place. I took a quick look around to make sure no one would over hear and leaned in and whispered. "I know about you, the Sharing, and the Animorphs. I know of some people who can help, but I need to make sure they can be trusted. I have a plan to keep an eye on them, but I need your help." Even as I was talking the thought I'd had returned. Really it just made sense that his hologram would be-

"What do you need?"

~~~~~

I guess I must just seem really trustworthy because after I told Erek my plan he agreed pretty quickly. Before long we were in the alley behind Magic Box and Erek was picking the lock on the back door.

"How do you know you can trust me?" I asked. "I mean you didn't even ask me how I knew about everything."

"Cassie Newton told me. I've lived long enough to know that there's more to this world then people want to see."

"That makes sense." I said. It did too, after all he's been on Earth since before the pyramids were built. I was about to ask about what other bump-in-the-night stuff he knew when the door clicked. Erek opened the door with ease and I turned on my flashlight. When I say there was a lot of debris I'm not kidding. There was barely enough room to move through the hallway leading to the store itself and I seriously doubted that Erek could have opened the door if he wasn't a robot.

"Alright, we need to make our way to the basement. That's where what we're looking for will probably be." I said before making my way into the store proper. Willow had really done a number on the place, there were books and broken artifacts everywhere. Apparently Anya had been too busy trying to get her top spot back with D'hoffryn to finish cleaning up the store. It may have been a side effect of the fact that I'd just broke in, but I really wanted to take the books. Hey, if I was going to live in the Buffyverse I felt I should at least be able to research the things trying to kill me. All looting plans aside, Erek and I quickly found the way into the basement and stated looking for the key to my plan.

"Mummy hand, Skull of a Heb'nek demon, How to Raise a Child Werewolf. There is a lot of odd stuff down here." Erek said.

"That's what happens when a magic shop is owned by people who actually use magic. Though you'd think they'd be more careful with all this stuff on a Hell- Whoa!" I almost had a heart attack when I turned to see a woman standing motionless behind me. I turned towards Erek.

"I found her!" I said. I turned back to April the robot. "Time to bring you back to life."

~~~~~

"Are you almost finished?" I asked. A quick check of my phone told me it was now well past 3. If I didn't get home soon someone would notice I hadn't been home all night. I might still be able to stay out late, but even at 20 mom didn't want me gone all night unless she knew where I was.

"Just about. The 'girlfriend' programming is pretty deeply integrated. You can go home if that's what you're worrying about." Erek was... Well I'm not entirely sure what he was doing. His hologram was down, and he was definitely patched into April's systems, but beyond that I wasn't sure.

"Alright." I said. "Can you have her meet me in the park at noon? I don't want to give you the location I need her to watch. It's nothing personal, but there is a chance that the Chee's anti-violence programing might end up interfering with the mission."

"I understand." Erek said. I nodded and left for home without another word.

The rest of the day consisted of me sleeping until almost noon, giving a newly revived April her mission, and doing research into the yeerks. Just like the original timeline there were a few hits, including a forum dedicated to resisting the yeerks. A smile spread on my face as I realized I knew this forum. It seemed that maybe, just maybe, I had a chance of changing how everything was going to go down. With a smirk and a plan I made my first post of Richard's Resistance Forum.

[Venom]

lol i love it

[~]

It Can Always Be Worse...

Monday morning hit me like a freight train. I had woke up from an odd dream about zombie pandas eating Judy Garland when it finally sunk in that I was trapped in another reality. Granted I at least had a vague idea as to what was going to happen over the next year and a half or so, but the fact remained that I had been thrown smack into the middle of no less then a warzone. On my left: Vampires, demons, and all sorts of flavors of nasty supernaturals. And on my right: Yeerks, Andalites, and Visser 3.

Or was he already Visser 1 in this timestream? That was another thing, I had no idea when I was relative to the Animorphs timeline. Had they met David yet? Did Tobias know who his father was? All I knew for certain was that I was past book 10, and even then I was just assuming that because Erek hadn't asked who the Animorphs were when I mentioned them. Hell, for all I knew they hadn't even met Elfangor yet.

Somehow I managed to push through those humbling thoughts and force myself to go to school. There had been an announcement about it being Buffy's first day as a councilor, and I decided to take my first opportunity to go and talk to her. There wasn't much in the way of people waiting, but I did recognize one person.

"I guess I have you to thank for getting me an in with Erek." I said as I took a seat next to Cassie Newton.

"It's the right plan, but it's not who you think it is."Cassie said.

"Well I guess I'll have to worry about that when it comes." I started rummaging through my bag for the pamphlet I'd gotten from a local clinic.

"Don't bother, it's going to happen no matter what you do." I pulled the pamphlet out and handed it to her.

"Forgive me for not wanting to let a good person die too soon. You really need to talk to your mom about your family's medical history."

"You won't give up, will you." It wasn't a question, just one of those things she just knew, but I felt the need to answer anyway.

"There must be something I can do, there's always a way. Otherwise the terrorists win." I said with a smirk. It at least go a laugh out of Cassie. "I am going to make damn sure you get to go to that stupid dance with your not-boyfriend even if I have to put you in mystical stasis to do it."

"I appreciate it, but it won't change anything."

"Cassie Newton?" We both looked at the door to se Buffy's head poking out. Cassie got up and went in to the office. for awhile I sat there waiting for my turn and working out what my next move was. Obviously I needed to find out where I was on the Animorphs timeline, but at the same time I needed to figure out what was going down Friday night. In the original timeline peter had wanted to use Cassie in a ritual to summon a demon and gain 'Glorious Riches', but my memories of this timeline told me that he was big onto the Sharing, which of course meant that more likely then not there was a slug in his brain. That meant either he was targeting her as a host, or worse his yeerk wanted power and was willing to go the occult route to get it. I shuddered at the thought of a yeerk wielding supernatural forces.

~~~~~~

Buffy looked at the paper in front of her, presumably my student record.

"So, Bartlett..." She was distracted, and I knew why. She was worried about Cassie. Thing was, and feel free to call me selfish, I really needed some help with my own problems.

"It's Dylan. I'll only ever use my first name if I get something published." I responded automatically. Thankfully it managed to get Buffy's attention.

"Okay, Dylan then. Mrs. Roth says you've been distracted in class lately." She said in full on councilor mode.

"A bit, yeah."

"Is there anything in particular distracting you?" Just the fact that I'm fully aware that I'm stuck in ground zero of two wars with the fate of the world at stake.

"Lot's of stuff really. You want a list?" I asked seriously.

"List me."

"Well, I'm ADD, likely suffer from depression, am at high risk of developing diabetes, live on a Hellmouth, and for the cherry on top, I'm Gay."

"Well, those are some distracting- Wait, you know about the hellmouth?"

"Yeah, got bored one day and started looking into the town's history, did you know it's right there uncensored in the public library? Of course that was after someone saved me from a 'Terrible Barbecue Fork Incident' last summer. But the Hellmouth doesn't concern me so much, what with the school having a resident Slayer and all." For a long moment Buffy just stared at me. Oh crap! I think I broke her. "Miss Summers?"

"Sorry. It's just that I'm not used to regular people recognizing me." She said, shaking her head, presumably to clear her thoughts. "Gay you say?" She asked with interest.

"Yeah, thing is I'm not sure if my parents know, and I feel awkward actually coming out to them. I mean I know they'll be fine with it, it's just that it seems forced, you know?" The rest of the session went rather smoothly. We mostly talked about the stress of moving and my plans for joining the Air Force, which I happily discovered i could do since Googling my name in this timeline didn't give away the whole gay thing. All in all I felt much better when I left. I was so distracted as I walked to my biology class that I didn't notice the blond guy until I ran smack into him. We both fell to the floor and for a good half a second I had no idea what was going on.

"Sorry, I was a little distracted. Are you-" I stopped mid sentence when I saw the thing sitting on the ground next to the blond guy. It was a simple blue cube with some strange markings on the sides. My eyes went wide as I realized what I was looking at.

"Dude, you really need to watch where you're going." David said.

[Phoenix004]

  Holy crap! As if Vampires and Yeerks weren't bad enough, you landed in the middle of the David Saga? Your character really can't catch a break!

The session with Buffy was nicely done too, very funny. 

[~]

State of my Life

~~~~~~

I managed to convince David that the blue box was a family heirloom that I had lost and gave him $20 as a reward. Then I went into the woods and easily found Ax's Scoop. After a tense moment I managed to convince him that I was a friend, he summoned the others and Jake gave the okay to give me the morphing power. Together we got into Buffy's house, and I officially introduced everyone. I lead Buffy to the vineyard, she pulled the scythe out of the stone. Willow managed to create that mini-sun spell, unleashed it and turned the First's much smaller übervamp army to so much dust. This had the side effect of destroying the earth-based yeerk pool and not destroy the town. With a little help from the chee we also managed to take out the one in orbit at the same time. We gave the Yeerks the choice of using the morphing power to become nothlits, and it worked out great. From there we went to LA, stopped the Beast, prevented Cordelia from ever even considering sleeping with Connor, and brought Wolfram & Hart down. All in all a decent days work.

Yeah, right.

Back here in my twisted reality I was just sitting on my bum staring at the cube. David picked it up and I looked up at him.

"What's your problem?" He asked.

"I... Uh..." Oh, crap. My best shot at setting something right, and I wasn't able to form a solid word. It really wasn't helping that David turned out to be really good looking.

"I'm gonna go now..."

"You wanna go out with me?" It was so sudden that I almost didn't realize I'd said anything.

"Wait, what?" David asked. I stood up and cleared my throat.

"I, um... I was wondering if maybe you'd like to go to the Bronze, maybe get some food." I said nervously.

"Um, sure."

"Oh, okay, sorry I- Wait, what?"

"Yes, I'll go out with you. I'm David." He held out his hand and gave a confident grin.

"Dylan." I said shaking his hand and matching his grin.

"Cool. And here I thought there wouldn't be any cute guys in Sunnydale." In my head I kept say I knew it! "Just one thing."

"What?"

"Where's the Bronze?"

~~~~~~

"So there I was standing in the produce aisle with this bottle of KY and sweet old Mrs. Sanders comes around the corner." I said. The small group that had gathered in our little corner of the Bronze bust out laughing.

"What did she say?" Kit asked.

"'In my day we used zucchini!'" Dawn almost fell out of her chair and Mike actually did. I'm not gonna lie, I was totally basking in the attention. I mean my weekend had consisted entirely of me worrying about two wars and my spanish test (I had forgotten most of my spanish after 7th grade). I hadn't even tried to make friends since I'd moved to Sunnydale with mom three years ago. I wasn't sure how i'd made it without anyone close for that long, especially considering I hadn't even been a part of RAF, or rather RRF I guess.

"This a private party, or can anyone join?" I looked up and saw Rachel. Cue brain shut down again. "Uh-"

"Sure thing, I don't really know everyone's names yet so any excuse to get repeats." David said. I have to admit I was really getting to like him a lot. While everyone made their introductions I caught Rachel half staring at David's jacket. For a second I was confused, and then it hit me. He still had the box on him. After Rachel introduced herself to David I decided to make my move.

"Hey, David, why don't we go get everyone refills." I looked at Rachel. "Mind helping us bring 'em out?" I asked in my 'I know what you want' voice. I really desperately hoped I was being more subtle then I felt like I was.

"Sure thing." Rachel said with a smile. If she'd picked up on my meaning she was much better then me at hiding it. I half dragged David as we walked towards the bar.

"Do we really need three people to-"

"This isn't about the drinks." I whispered, "Is it Rachel."

"No."

"Uh, do you two know each other?" David asked.

"David, I need you to trust me right now okay?" I said. "Let's go outside where we can talk more privately." David and Rachel both nodded, though David was understandably confused. Once we were out back I started talking. "You were looking at the box right? You're one of them?"

"Yes." Rachel said, her tone had the same edge you'd expect from a warrior ready to fight. "How do you know about us?"

"What are you two talking about?" David said nervously. I noticed he was slowly backing away.

"David, I'm really sorry but-" A man came out of the shadows.

"Oooh, look at that! Free delivery." The man said. Between the sharp teeth and bumpy forehead he was either a vampire or a klingon, and I was pretty sure klingons didn't have yellow eyes.

"Sh*t, David, Rachel back inside now!" I yelled. We all turned back towards the back door, when a second vampire stepped out.

"Tch, tch. It's not polite to run off like that." He said with a slightly posh accent. David and Rachel made for the other way down the alley, but I knew it would be useless.

"Aw, please don't go, we're just a little hungry." A woman's voice said. "Can I have the brunette one James? Pretty please."

I let out a sigh as I realized this was what my life was going to be like from now on.

[Phoenix004]

Ha ha! David being gay was a nice twist, although I suppose I should have seen that coming, lol. And trust those pesky Vampires to interrupt your conversation! How rude! 

[~]

Nothing's Ever Simple is it..

~~~~~~

"Brunettes are girls with brown hair. I happen to be male and have the equipment to prove it." Either I'd suddenly gained a solid backbone or had completely lost my mind. My money was on the latter.

"Well it's good to know that someone is teaching kids proper language these days." 'James' said. "And you look positively delicious, I think I may just keep you."

"Sorry dude, you're a bit old for my tastes." I quipped. I knew I was surrounded and that I was likely going to die, but apparently my mouth hadn't gotten the message.

"You say that like you have a choice." James grabbed me and pulled me towards him. "It only hurts for a second." He whispered seductively before his face shifted and he sunk his fangs into my neck. I was only vaguely aware of the sounds behind me as Rachel, David, or both fought their attackers. I wasn't sure, but I didn't really feel the need to check. In fact, I didn't feel much of a need to do anything, I wasn't even trying to get out of James' grip. An odd little voice in my head mused that this what being under a thrall must feel like.

What happened next is a bit of a blur. I remembered James going dusty. Then someone catching me as I fell to the ground. I heard running, and looked behind me to see the blue box.

"Gotta keep it safe. Gotta find Bu... Buf-" Was all I managed to say before I passed out from the blood loss.

~~~~~~

This ceiling is pretty. I thought as I regain consciousness. I wasn't totally sure where I was other then on something really comfy under a 'pretty ceiling'.

"Hey, I think he's waking up!" I knew that voice, I turned towards the source and saw a brilliant matrix of green energy.

"You're very pretty on the inside." I said to Dawn as her human form coalesced in my vision.

"I think he's still a bit out of it." She said awkwardly. I was too, and it was kind of a nice change of pace to be honest, but then it all hit me.

"Rachel! The Box!" I tried to sit up. "Did she get it, did you-" I fell straight back down and the room started spinning. I sat up again, this time slowly. I realized I was in Buffy's bed, which was a little odd sure, but hey I wasn't complaining.

"Good, you're awake." Buffy said from the doorway. She walked in carrying the Blue Box. "What is it and why did those vampires want it?"

I shook my head. "They didn't want it, someone else did. I needed to keep it safe. There were two others, a guy and a girl, both blond. Where are they?"

"I saw David running off past the front entrance, I'm not sure about Rachel." Dawn said. It figured David would just drop the box and run, oh well so much for having him as a boyfriend.

"The blond girl, Rachel, why did she want the box?" Buffy said. I shook my head.

"I can't tell you, it isn't safe yet. I need to know if she's okay."

"I'll tell you if you tell me what this is."

"This is too damn important to get into a 'You go first' match." I yelled. "I can't tell you what the box is yet. Period. Nothing you say or do will change that. I really need to know where Rachel is because if she was okay, you probably wouldn't have the box." I stared Buffy square in the eye and held my gaze. There was something profoundly disturbing about that and for a brief moment I thanked whatever forces guided the universe for the absence of a full blown Soul Gaze. I couldn't imagine what I would have seen in Buffy's soul, but her eyes conveyed plenty of the horrible things she'd seen.

They also told me she was lying.

"You don't know where she is, do you?"

To her credit she did a good job masking her surprise at being called out, but I had seven seasons worth of observing her mannerisms to catch it.

"Look, I get it. You see yourself as the authority on the strange things that happen in this town, but I'm telling you right now that this one is out of your jurisdiction, Miss Summers." Wow, I really had grown a pair. Trying to intimidate a Slayer isn't exactly high on the list of smart decisions.

Which is why I wasn't really surprised when she came at me.

"There is a girl's life at stake. If I find out this has anything to do with that I will strike you down." Buffy held the box in front of me. I stared at it for a moment before taking it. I looked back up at her face

"That's it? You're just going to trust me?"

"You have a reason why I shouldn't?" None that I can tell you, Buffy.

"No."

"Good, I'll have someone take you home." She turned to look at Dawn. "Go call Xan-"

"No!" I yelled. "I can't trust anyone, not even you. The fact that you gave me this helps your case, but I really can't afford to let anyone else know about this."

"Don't worry, you can trust us." Dawn said.

"No, I can't." I said shaking my head. "The only people I can trust are in this room." Buffy looked thoughtful for a moment then looked back up at me.

"I'll walk you home. It's dark and you'll need someone watching your back." I nodded in agreement and we left the house.