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

[herotypical]

[ 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. ]

Comments

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

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

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

[Video]

[herotypical]

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.

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

And America is the rocky city place?

[Video]

[herotypical]

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.

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

How big?

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

Like several cities and multiple terrains big?

[Video]

[herotypical]

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.

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

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?

[Video]

[herotypical]

[ 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?

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

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.

[Video]

[herotypical]

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

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

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.

[Video]

[herotypical]

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

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

Vampires, you say? Is that a big problem in your world?

[Video]

[herotypical]

Are rats a problem in yours?

[ big rats with fangs? ]

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

Not really. My world's almost entirely ocean and rats aren't great swimmers with sharks in the water.

Seakings can be a bit of a problem though, they eat whole ships if you let them.

[Video]

[herotypical]

Then...vampires -- in my world -- are like seakings. I guess. Whatever those are. Except vamps eat people instead of ships. And have bad teeth.

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

Big ones I'd assume.

[Video]

[herotypical]

Fangs. Two of them. All the better to eat you with.

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

And otherwise they seem like regular humans?

[Video]

[herotypical]

Outside of their game face? Yep. Except for their lack of reflection and total pulseless existence, I guess. But most people can't tell the difference.

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

No pulse? So they're kind of like zombies, not really alive?

[Video]

[herotypical]

Y-yeah. A person's gotta die to become one. It's a whole...process.

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

How annoying. [And gross, also gross.] Do they have someone who controls them or something?

[Video]

[herotypical]

They control themselves. Their soul's gone, but there's a demon left behind. Calling the shots, so to speak.

[ ...sorta. ]

[Video]

[fierybluebird]

I see. That makes them a more advanced foe then, eh. Like seakings, aye.

How does one become a slayer? Just killing one vampire, or is it more like piracy, but with restrictions on where to travel?