herotypical | voice + action ✪ there must be some way to bring the hero home

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voice + action ✪ there must be some way to bring the hero home

[ after a week of agonizing combat, buffy summers returns home with only exhaustion on her mind. despite all the excitement and crisis, there's little left to do other than collapse onto her bed and fall into a sleep fit for a weary, worn-out soul. morning sees her feeling no less -- shudder -- zombieish. the horror of the last week is bone-and-marrow deep and has yet to fully make itself known in her system. the slayer is running on auxillery humanity, stringing herself along from second to second until she can find a friendly face. find willow and...

and all she finds is an empty room. an empty closet. empty drawers. her best friend is gone. deported while she wasn't even looking. come the afternoon, after she's gotten the first onslaught of emotions out of her system, buffy sits alone on the empty bed. she addresses her journal: ]

Willow and I have this game we like to play. Willow Rosenberg. She was in town...but now she's not. [ a pause allows buffy to catch her breath. to stay strong. ] We call it 'Anywhere But Here' -- self-explanatory, really. Pick a fantasty-elsewhere to be and a fantasy-someone to share it with. I'm not talking about the obvious ones: home or family or anything even remotely whiffing of responsibility. I'm talking about fun. I'm talking about pure escapism. I'm talking Daniel Craig on the beach or Amy Yip at the waterpark.

I'll go first. Show you how it's done. [ but which escape route from reality should she take? ] The '88 Winter Olympics. The Saddledome. Calgary, of all places. Brian Boitano is taking the time to personally skate me through his gold medal routine. Perhaps there's hot chocolate involved. I, being made entirely of my own imagination, copy each move perfectly.

Got it? Good. Because now it's your turn.

[ when her broken little tribute to an absent friend is finished, she'll be searching out her injured pirate (wherever he may be convalescing) and it's off to good spirits, where she can be found working a shift behind the bar. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That's...[ amazing. ] I'm surprised anyone could get bored of the place you just described. I'd gladly stay there forever.

[ in another life. ]

[Laughs.] Well, the first half is paradise, all right. But the second half, the New World where I'm from, can be a little hard to survive.

The islands are absolutely gorgeous though, eh. My Pops loved to meet at a spring island with cherry blossoms all year long. It had the most amazing waterfalls so that no matter what angle you you were looking at them from you can still see rainbows. And the flowers themselves are said to heal just about anything. It's a good place drinking sake. So I guess add that my list too, eh? I don't even care what season.

[ the description prompts a genuine smile. albeit a small one. the picture is simply so well-painted. evocative. ]

My parents took me to the Eaton Canyon falls when I was really little but -- I think they're probably a pretty sad excuse. Haven't seen any others since. Not with my own eyes.

I'll have to use my powers of imagination to figure out how lovely yours must be.

Eaton Canyon Falls? What's that like?

Imagine a lot of pink. And blue. If you like colors, it's a good place to be.

Rocky. That's what it's like. And busy -- on account of it being the perfect no-hassle day-trip out of Los Angeles. But I think I would've preferred more colour.

Of course, I was a kid at the time. So I loved anything that wasn't yet another office building.

A lot of cities in your world, I take it?

We have our fair share. I've only lived in one city, though. Otherwise it's been a small town and what probably passes for an adorable Scottish hamlet.

Scottish?

I think I understand why played this game so often then. Now I'm really glad my initial home was a ship shaped like a whale. Have boat: will travel.

So I keep hearing. About ships, I mean. Never was a ship girl before...[ jack. ]

Scottish as in Scotland. It's a country. And the one I was living in oh-so-briefly before being yanked into this spot.

We have a lot of pirates here. [Pirates rule.]

Aye? What's Scotland like?

[ in theory, she's now a mate on a pirate ship. if the joanna joyce can be called such. but buffy would never consider herself a pirate; there are lines that must be drawn. ]

Cold. And...vaguely alcoholic. Rainy. Way rainier than home-home.

[Marco tends to assume everyone gets adopted into pirate families sooner or later. It's in the nature of pirates. Or maybe that's just him.]

Alcoholic sounds fun at least. Rainy though, kind of like a Spring island?

Depends. Are Spring Islands also foggy and draped with the unsoothing sounds of bagpipe music?

They... could be. Depends on the island usually.

Bagpipes, really? I've got to ask: why? Is that why it's vaguely alcoholic?

I...can't really say. The Scots are a strange people. But they're not my people. I'm just an American stranded in their highlands.

And America is the rocky city place?

Oh boy. Uhm. Los Angeles has a bit of rockiness to it. But also some beach. And some -- look, LA is in America but America's...

America's really big.

How big?

[This'll be... fun. Seeing as continents aren't a thing where he lives.]

Like several cities and multiple terrains big?

Big as in...as in several time-zones big. As in not-quite-as-big-as-Canada but big enough. Big as in--

I don't know the actual numbers. Sorry.

Timezones?

[Just rubs his face a little.]

Ah don't worry about it. It's probably hard to put it into perspective anyway. Just really really big.

So how come you mostly stayed in Los Angeles or Scotland? Job thing, or is that normal?

[ DEEP BREATH. ]

Born in LA. I lived there until I was fifteen -- my mom and my sister and me, we moved to a smaller town not too far away. Sunnydale. Lived there for seven years before it...uhm...

Before the real-estate market got really nasty. Work took me to Scotland. [ technically, work took her to sunnydale too. ah well. ] And then crazy random happenstance brought me here. I know. It's a downright stationary life in comparison to a...you said 'pirate', right?

Aye, pirate. First division commander of the Whitebeard pirates; Marco at your service.

Admittedly the idea of being so roped in is pretty foreign to me, but my family's spent the better part of the last few decades just around a few of our favorite islands in order to protect them. We were never really in the "exploring" business to begin it. That was more Gol D. Roger's thing.

Buffy Summers. Slayer and bartender. A-and first mate on the Joanna Joyce. At yours. I suppose.

Nice to meet you Miss Buffy, or do you prefer Summers?

And a bartender? Always beloved by pirates, so I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance. Though I'm curious what you're a "slayer" of, exactly.

Buffy. Just...Buffy. Buffy the vampire Slayer.

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