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

Are rats a problem in yours?

[ big rats with fangs? ]

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.

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

Big ones I'd assume.

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

And otherwise they seem like regular humans?

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.

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

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

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

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

[ ...sorta. ]

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?

Say...say there could only ever be one pirate at a time. And that pirate was chosen by a mystical lottery. And she could only ever be a she, because those were the rules.

That's what becoming a slayer is like.

You're the only one? [He's just visibly shocked.]

How many vampires are there?

Oodles of vamps. And I was supposed to be the only one but -- hey, I'm not one for rules.

Yikes.

Oh? Not that I am either, but so you were able to recruit others to help or something?

Something like that. [ she doesn't elaborate. ] There's another in town, even. Two for the price of one.

That's convenient. I can't imagine trying to do something like that alone, eh. Probably because I'm a pirate and all, but nakama are important.

I was under the impression that pirates weren't a loyal crowd. As a rule. Not usually.

A crew without loyalty is like a ship without sails or keel. No power, no backbone.

Perhaps it's different in other worlds. In mine, everything is stacked against us, the sea, the islands, the government, other crews, everything. The only way we survive is with each other. The world's strongest man had the world's strongest crew. 1600 strong, and every one of them was treated like the captain's own son. Even his allies he loved like that. There are other pirate emperors, but even among them, nakama is everything. If you truly want to break a pirate, get rid of his nakama. Then he'll have nothing left.

What? No mutinies in your world? Sounds kinda idealistic...

[Instantly tenses quite visibly.]

Betrayals... [Steady breath, deadpan face, he's fine, really.] Are rare, but they're known to happen. Really, I can't emphasize enough how rare they are though.

And full out mutinies only happen to bad captains. Or at minimum, captains incapable of picking good crews.

[He grits his teeth and clenches a fist, but even then it's still shaking.] But anyone can get deceived with a bad betrayal. [His voice just gets darker and despite being quieter, it's just that much more intense.] Anyone.

You paint a prettier picture of piracy than the pirate I know and love. The way he tells it, the man who falls behind is left behind on pirate ships.

Then he comes from a shitty world or has terrible friends and allies.

In my world, you don't leave a nakama behind for anything. We fought the whole damn world to try to get back just one of our own even though it was impossible, even though we couldn't do it. And there's not a single one of us who wouldn't do it all over again for the slightest chance, or just to make that stand.

A pirate crew who won't risk that to protect one another isn't strong enough to make it to the top. So they're not even a threat.

[He's not sure that's a pretty picture, but he is extremely convicted about it.]

...If only we could all live in worlds where honour amongst thieves was an imperative, and not a fairy tale.

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