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

[herotypical]

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

[fierybluebird]

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.

[herotypical]

I'm trying to go that route. The...learning about the wind and sea one. Not quite as easy as I expected it'd be but -- I'm a quick learner.

[fierybluebird]

It's difficult. I still can't navigate to save my life or that of my family, but it's too different from flying for me.

[herotypical]

Wait wait wait.

Now we're talking about flying?

[fierybluebird]

Like I said, I experienced the winds in a way most others can't, eh?

[herotypical]

Last I checked, our wings were strictly non-functional.

[fierybluebird]

Ergo why it's a fairly singular experience.

[herotypical]

Well? Are you gonna explain how?

Is it magic?

[fierybluebird]

[Hesitates a little.]

Not magic. I have two species. My other form is a bird.

[herotypical]

Is this anything like my other car's a Porsche?

[fierybluebird]

Depends on what a car or a Porsche is, eh.

[herotypical]

For starters, a Porsche is a car.

[fierybluebird]

Okay, and a car is?

[herotypical]

A vehicle? With wheels? And an engine? How long have you been here without learning about cars?

[fierybluebird]

Over a year. [He hangs out with people who think he comes from an advanced world and time period :|]

Do we have cars here?

[herotypical]

Nah. Or -- not usually. Some of the drafts have had'em. The last one did.

[fierybluebird]

I see... Kind of. I actually haven't been drafted yet. That was the one with the zombies?

[herotypical]

The...infected, yeah.

[ it's a subtle correction, but it needs to be made. ]

[fierybluebird]

So nothing like Gecko Moria's shadow puppets?

[Zombies from his world... not that it would make a lot of sense to Buffy. Something that slowly occurs to Marco.]

Have you dealt with real zombies before, that is?

[herotypical]

Mmhm. [ indeed, the puppets mean nothing to her. ] Well -- my world's version thereof. They don't eat brains. But they are dead. Undead.

[fierybluebird]

Zombies in your world eat brains?

The ones in my world aren't infectious, they're dead bodies that are controlled by shadows. It's a whole... devil fruit thing. It gets weird.

[herotypical]

No -- they don't. That's what I'm trying to say. It's a common misconception.

[ as for this shadows malarkey? she leaves it to sink in. ]

[fierybluebird]

Oh. The ones in my world don't either. [Shrugs.] I think they dance though, but that's because Gecko Moria is a freak. He's their shadow master. Or was. He died. Good riddance.

[herotypical]

So -- necromancy, right?