herotypical | 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

And? How is it played? What are the rules? How do you win?

There's 1, 2, or 3 rule sets. You toss the coins in the sea to tell Davy Jones about the game, and that sets how many rounds there are.

The games vary, there's Captain Duel, Donut Races, Groggy Ring, Hit & Dead Ball -- which is like Dodgeball, pretty much anything so long as the two captains agree to it.

If a crew wins one of the challenge rounds, they can pick an opposing crewmate to join their side. If they don't want anyone from the other crew, they can choose to take the flag instead and it can never be raised again. Any lost team members can only be regained by more rounds of Davy Back Fight, and same for the flag.

That's it for overall rules. Each side can interfere or "cheat" and there might be some additional rules per round or game, but they might get broken anyway, eh. Generally though, the crews try not to get too out of hand otherwise it'll just devolve into a full-out fight and that would defeat the purpose.

How...civilized.

For pirates anyway.

No. I think that's pretty civilized by a lot of yardsticks. Not just the piratical ones.

You think so?

I always that it was just more something clever than civilized. And I've yet to meet a pirate who doesn't consider himself at least a little clever, eh.

And so what do you think of yourself, hm?

I'm very clever.

I've got some dumb moments thought, same as anyone else, eh.

Are we talking top-of-your-class clever or street-smarts clever?

Neither really. I had no formal education and my life was nowhere near as difficult as a lot of my brothers growing up. I didn't even grow up on the streets like them, but I have experience with the wind and sea in a way no one else can obtain.

So, "highly specialized" clever I suppose.

Which really, is the best kind. Since I get to make it up as I go along, in the true pirate fashion, eh.