monoculi | 001. not in kansas, toto [action/voice]

001. not in kansas, toto [action/voice]

[Xander has woken up in some pretty weird places in his time. It's an occupational hazard of fighting the forces of evil and usually getting knocked unconscious as a result. However, this - Luceti, that is - has certainly raised the bar of weirdness.

Cold, hard, earth underneath his bare (and oddly uncomfortable) back, greenery and trees all around, and some frankly bizarre white pants on his lower half. Blinking, groaning and fumbling to feel for his eyepatch (on his face, mercifully) he sits up.]

What the...? [he mutters, looking around incredulously - at that moment noticing his clothes piled neatly beside him, along with the rather incongruous looking journal. He stares, then sighs, reaching for his clothes - this is all probably Andrew's moronic doing, his idea of a hilarious prank - after all, if it was a demon thing, he'd probably be dead or eaten by now. Or possibly disembowelled.

He moves to pull his sweater over his head, but encounters difficulty at his shoulder blades - an odd obstruction, something there where there should be nothing. After a couple of frustrated tugs, he reaches back to find out what the problem is, and oh - feathers. Attached to... wings. Well, that's a game-changer.

Now fully miffed (and feeling a lot less relaxed about this whole experience) he abandons the sweater and reaches for the book instead, stifling the urge to panic. There were bound to be clues in here, right? He arrives at the first page and eyes it with suspicion - some kind of communication device? After a moment of ginger examination, he hesitantly selects the 'voice' function, muttering to himself:]

Yay, a mysterious book. Because that always ends so spectacularly well.

[and now raising his voice substantially:]

Okay, listen up, Andrew - whatever kind of hilarious joke you're playing, it's very much not hilarious. And if you don't get out here within the next two seconds and undo whatever funky mojo you did to my back, I will personally locate and destroy your vintage 1989 Sega Mega Drive console. Mint condition and boxed, third drawer from the left, don't think I won't do it!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ the slayer laughs. ]

Or a 1960s whacked out version of Narnia. I get it. It's quite the pill to swallow, complete with trippy elements and thing best left to hallucintions. But...

[ like sunnydale, it's hard not to feel some kind of affinity to a place you've learned to fight for and protect. ] But it eventually makes a kind of sense, even if that sense is still pretty sucky.

[ the perk of explaining this to xander, she decides, is that she can trust him to meet supernatural adversity with maybe only a blink or two. ] This whole area is under a bubble, of sorts. And that bubble is our cage. We're test subjects. Or we're conscripted soldiers. Or we're the best damn thing on television. Or we're all of the above. The Malnosso don't take us here, Xander. But they do keep us under wraps once we are here -- all under the great scientific banner of trying to find a way home for themselves.

There's a guide. Kinda like a tourism brochure. I'll drag it out for you once we get inside.

[well, at least he can rely on Buffy to laugh at his lame jokes.]

You win the prize for best explanation so far. [he mulls all that over in thoughtful silence for a moment.] Do we know where this bubble is? I mean, are we talking alternate dimension? Different timeline? Because I think I would have noticed if you pulled a sudden supernatural vanishing act.

We're pulled from a moment. Stolen, I guess. 'Cause people return and show up and return again, and no one ever misses them in their own chronology. When my golden ticket is eventually punched, I'll be shunted right back to the time I came from. It'd be slick if it wasn't also so...kooky.

[ as for a where? she sighs. ] Alternate dimension is my best bet. Some people think it's a different planet, but that's usually only the really-far-future folk. The folk who come from places with spaceships.

Spaceships? [he momentarily perks up, because - well, spaceships! - but no, now is not the time to indulge his sci-fi fantasies.] ...aaaand I'm focusing.

So wait, if people return and show up again, have I been here before? Because I talked to a guy - Captain Something - who claimed to know me. Said I was 'suspicious and resentful', in fact.

Jack. [ a little too quick. a little too careless. ]

And he's right. You were here, once. A couple years ago. [ and the day buffy had lost xander to the fickle powers controlling who got to go home when was the day that drove her into jack sparrows's arms.

as for suspicious and resentful. well. she remains tight-lipped, saying instead: ] Just the once, though. It's just been the once. Before today.

Edited 2013-03-10 11:49 (UTC)

Huh. [it's disconcerting to have absolutely no recollection of the experience - that would be 'the forgetting', then. Buffy's answer sparks off a little connection in his brain, however, and he turns his head slightly to give her a quizzical look.]

Is that the same Jack whose clothes you're offering to loan out to various waifs and strays?

[ busted.

buffy picks her way through this conversational minefield with considerable dignity. sorta. ] I was kinda hoping I'd have more control over how that second first impression went. A few friendly drinks around the kitchen table. Maybe a veggie platter. [ and her present to keep jack from saying anything too ludicrous.

her boots thud on the bridge's old wood. house seven isn't far away, now. ]

Alright. Tell it to me straight. How much damage control do I gotta drum up?

[ she's clearly expecting xander and jack's conversation to have been a disaster, perhaps not giving enough credit to either man. ]

[well, disaster might be something of an exaggeration, though certainly there's room for improvement. though quite why Buffy would be so keen for this guy to make a positive impression on him eludes him - unless. oh dear. he has suspicions.]

The man said his specialisms were pilfering, kidnapping and plundering.

He did, did he? [ she responds to the suspicions by holding onto xander's arm just a little more firmly. ] To be honest, they've lately been more like boat-building, pony-corralling, and waffle-making.

It seems it's hard to both pilfer and plunder in a town where money is non-existent. And as for the kidnapping...

[ a shrug. once, jack kidnapped one of her shoes. buffy plays off the pirate's potency, deciding the real acts of black-hearted scoundrelosity could be left until a later reveal. ]

[suspicions? confirmed. he shakes his head ruefully, giving Buffy a look that's somewhere between amusement and disapproval. it's a look that says: 'honestly, what is with you Summers women and your ridiculous taste in men?']

Please at least tell me he's not a Thricewise or a vampire?

[because seriously. SERIOUSLY.]

Edited 2013-03-10 12:28 (UTC)

[ a soft scoffing noise. it took dawn's extended stay in luceti about a year ago for buffy to fully comprehend the whole thricewise fiasco. ]

He's a pirate. [ WAIT FOR IT. ] But, he's a pirate with a pulse. Hence the being a captain. And the plundering.

[ and the being totally exactly entirely as though he'd walked off the cover of a bodice-ripping romance novel. and did she mention he looks like johnny depp? she should mention that, at some point.

petulantly: ] It's not like I made it easy for him, Xand.

[he holds up a hand at this juncture, because... he just does not need to know how easy buffy made anything, ever.] Detail. No more with the detail.

[he pinches the bridge of his nose, wishing he had some glasses to clean.] A pirate. You're dating a pirate. Like an actual, 'avast ye landlubbers', 'me hearties', salty sea dog, scurvified pirate?

...Not that kind of not-easy, Xander. Jeez louise--

[ but the long tale of being chased and not so much as even liking the pirate for a good full year was a complicated tale, involving many things neither party is proud of. it's no surprise that the slayer and the pirate started out as wary almost-enemies... ]

Actually, I think it's been a few years since he's last been scurvified. But he does have a hat.

[okay, so Xander has moved past the shocked and horrified phase, and is slowly transitioning into the 'wow, this is actually hilarious' portion of the event.]

Does he also have a glistening booty?

Xander? I love you, but I will not hesitate to smack you upside the head. Just putting that on the hypothetical table for all to see and fear.

[ HUFF. ]

Sorry. That was completely immature of me. You're not going to make me walk the plank, are you?

[he can't help himself.]

Check yourself before your wreck yourself, my soon-to-be-chum. [ haha. get it? chum. ] I'm a bona fide certified sailoress, now. I can cut jibs with the best of them.

[ sorta. kinda. she's still learning, actually. it's a work in process. apparently proper non-motorized sailing is not a simple feat. ]

I have no idea what a jib is, but I respect your newfound nautical skill. [a pause. and okay, he'll get a little bit more serious, just for a moment.] ...and your right to date whoever you want, as long as whoever that is makes you happy and treats you right.

[ her smile is small, but sincere. buffy knows that it sounds foolish to explain that -- somehow -- a tattered 18th century pirate manages to make her happy. but jack knows what it's like to die and be fished back out of the afterlife. he knows what it's like to lead a crew, if not an army. and he'd once taken a wrecked slayer's pinkie finger and made her solemnly swear to try and have more fun in her life.

and if anyone could cut through the piratical posturing and really see those virtues, it might in fact be xander: the one who saw all sorts of otherwise obscured truths. ]

He wasn't lying about the whole you-being-previously-suspicious. But, to be honest, the last time you were here? He and I weren't a thing. He was, instead, a thing I very much tried to avoid. And you were a you from a long time ago. [ ... ] You remember that road trip you took after graduation? Because, yeah, you were still on it when you last showed your face in Luceti.

[ she's silent while she lets that sink in. a much younger xander -- one that buffy had felt she had to handle gently, given what she knew about all of their futures. and what he didn't know about the ups and downs ahead of him. ] Hell. I'll bet you were kinda suspicious of me, too. You never said so, of course. Perfect gentleman.

[Xander has learned through hard-won, painful experience that it's best for everyone involved if he doesn't try to interfere in Buffy's romantic affairs - he's biased, and not in the same way that he used to be (all jealousy and frustrated romantic rivalry) but now more fiercely protective, like a brother, in many ways. and though he'll always assess any new love interest with a critical eye, he's certainly become more accepting.

and frankly, as long as this Captain Jack isn't a murderous, centuries-old vampire, he ranks as an improvement in Xander's eye(s) - he's just tired of seeing her hurt, and of seeing her lonely, for that matter. who knows, this Jack might even approach Riley-like levels of boyfriend quality. Riley remains Xander's favourite, by the way.]

Post-graduation me? Really? [he gives an exaggerated shudder, mulling over some of the implications of that. it was a completely different time, and he can imagine how the discrepancy must have felt for Buffy. awkward, no doubt.]

I hope you told past-me to lay off the blinding Hawaiian shirts. [he gives her an apologetic smile.] And to be less of an ass.

[ she turns the pair of them up a short gravel path in front of a single storey house. house seven -- her home, though she'll be careful not to refer to it as such in front of xander. for now, at least.

she releases his arm, fishing in her pocket for the key to the front door. ]

Don't worry. Interventions were had. [ though it's hard to say who was intervening on who. the discrepancies had gone both ways; although it had been difficult for buffy to adjust to a xander who didn't know even half of their storied friendship, she suspected things were even more difficult for a xander who didn't know why his best friend could be so...sad.

clumsily explaining her death to him had been one of the hardest things she'd ever had to do. currently, it's such a relief to turn her head and eye up a friend who already knows her darker corners. even after years in luceti, she has few people in town who could ever know her as well as xander knows her. ]

But I wonder if it's too late to confess that I actually never minded the shirts. [ the fashionista may be both self-proclaimed and trend-judgemental, but allowances are made for personal flair. and xander has always had a lot of personal flair. ] Not that I miss them, mind you. Don't consider that confession a carte blanche invitation to fall back into old and pineapple-y ways.

[arm now buffy-less, he thrusts his hands into his pockets as she fiddles with keys, giving the house a cursory once-over. it looks nice enough, though the intrinsic niceness of all this is actually kind of disturbing in itself. it's not the natural order of things.]

Oh, don't worry, there will be no pineapple-y relapse. I've watched enough episodes of Queer Eye to know my fashion limitations. [and he will staunchly blame said watching on Dawn, for the record. a beat, before he adds:] I've said it before and it bears repeating: I need more guy friends.

[ the fob she produces from her pocket contains a few keys. certainly, there's more than just this house to which the slayer has access. but she bounds up the front steps and is quick to unlock the door, nudging it open with a shoulder and gesturing xander inside with a flourish of her fingers.

the house itself is fairly open-concept. thanks to jack's desire to keep things generally very ship-shape, the front room is shockingly tidy. but it's also a little sparse, as if many people used to live here but had only recently disappeared along with their natural clutter.

she tosses her keys onto a narrow side-table and her scarf soon follows in a pool of fuzzy wool, proving (perhaps) that the tidiness is certainly not buffy's fault. ]

You should have thought about that before you agreed to play Nick Fury to an army with a notable lack y-chromosomes. [ a chuckle. ] I'm sure manly man-pals can be arranged. I might know a few good men in town. Tasteful introductions can be made. Connections forged. It'll be exactly like a Jane Austen novel only with more testosterone and fewer doilies.

And instead of 'Jane Austen novel', I'm gonna pretend you just said 'Rambo'. [all in jest of course - he loves women and the company of women. though at times he does fear his masculinity is being steadily eroded one ice cream sleepover at a time.

in any case, he follows Buffy inside, taking in the house and its tidiness, and feeling like a rather untidy addition, unsure of where to put himself.]

Nice place. [he offers, with an expansive gesture.]

[ action ]

[ action ]

[ action ]

[ action ]

[ action ]

[ action ]

[ action ]

[ action ]

[ action ]

[ action ]

[ action ]

[ action ]

1/2

2/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject