MCA #0, Thursday morning

[needsaparrot]

Xander was slouched on the sofa studying the layout of the building, wondering if he could get away with adding another wing or something to deal with the slow but steady stream of new townies that seemed to be trickling in, considering that Giles had filled the last available apartment and with the landing pad on the roof it wasn't like he could build up.

He wasn't using it as an excuse to have something to stare at besides the wall while he obssessed about various conversations, some of them more unsettling (and less one-sided) than others. At all.
__
[OOC: For a specific visitrix.]

Comments

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

Mel came down to MCA in the hopes that she might be able to get a chance to use the holosuite thing that Willow and Xander had been working on.

When she didn't see anyone in the office she got a little worried and headed to Xander's apartment and knocked on the door.

[needsaparrot]

Xander got up and wandered over, laptop still in one hand, to open the door. "Hey. Morning."

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

"Morning. Not up to office hours today?" Mel asked subtly.

Hey. She can be subtle. It happens.

[needsaparrot]

"Thought about it, but I haven't had my morning Oh God This Means I Have To Shave Doesn't It conversation with myself yet," Xander told her. "I'm still working on the last of breakfast."

Which was waffles. Yes, his keyborad was sticky. Yes, somewhere Willow was frowning.

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

"Everything okay?" Mel asked as she looked around the apartment. The last time she was here she had fell asleep pretty quickly and the whole dream thing kind of shook her up so she hadn't gotten a good view of it before.

[needsaparrot]

"Here?" Xander stepped out if her way to let her further into the room. "Yeah. At least one girl seems to be walking around town possessed by something, but there's not a lot there to throw a Slayer at."

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

"Well, I meant with you but..." Mel said with a shrug. "What's the deal with the possessed girl?"

[needsaparrot]

"There might be a couple - Willow's roommate, and Lana Lang. They've been acting weird and putting some not-so-funny spells on people they've been around." Xander's lips clamped down into a grim frown for a moment as he set the laptop down on the coffee table in front of the couch, which still held the remains of breakfast.

"Bridge handwavily said Parker and a couple other people are hitting the books on it."

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

Mel face scrunched up in an expression that conveyed the emotion of "Ugh. Books/Research."

"What kind of spells?" Mel asked. "I've heard that Madrox goof is a dog. Would that have anything to do with that?"

[needsaparrot]

"Jamie?" The dark look slipped off Xander's face and he snickered. "Okay, maybe that one's a little funny."

Serious again, he added, "Love-spelling Bridge, not so cool." Despite the fact that, y'know, he'd done it to someone when he was seventeen. But at least he was aware that it wasn't one of his finer moments.

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

Mel's mouth formed into an "o" of understanding followed by a nod that tried to hide a smile.

"Right. You sure you don't want me to take care of the issue?" Mel asked. "An unconscious witch casts no spells."

[needsaparrot]

Xander blinked at her, then gave a small grin. "Yeah, but Marie might not appreciate the brain-damage once she gets de-possessed."

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

"If she's brain damaged how could she appreciate it?" Mel joked. "Plus I wouldn't hit her that hard. On purpose."

[needsaparrot]

"Why don't we save the blunt trauma option as a last resort?" Xander cleared away his plate from the coffee table, sadly re-syruping his fingers in the process. "You, ah, want some waffles?" he asked Mel as he headed for the kitchen. "Still got batter."

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

"Sure. What's a waffle? Is it part of baseball?" Mel asked.

[needsaparrot]

"...." Xander poked his head back around the kitchen doorframe. "Do I want to--- oh. Not that kind of batter. This is the kind you fry and then eat."

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

"Food sounds good," Mel said as she looked around the room and started looking at some of the pictures that Xander had around. "Is there anything I should check patrol wise for this possession thing?"

[needsaparrot]

"Well, you probably want to avoid Lana and Marie," Xander called from the kitchen, where he was pouring more batter into the waffle iron. "Far as I know they're not usually witches, so no way to tell how much power whoever's in the driver's seats really has."

He'd had time to unpack a lot of boxes since the last time Mel was here. She'd find a lot of photos out, not all of them hung up or even in frames yet, though. Willow, Giles, Buffy and Dawn with their mom. Tara. Bridge with Xander and by himself, Larry in their old apartment. Parker, Isabel, Rory. That photo of Xander and Faith on the couch had been pulled from its album and stuck into a small frame, but he hadn't decided where to hang it yet, so it sat on one of the bookshelves near the tv for the moment.

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

Mel recognized most of the people in the photos from her interactions in Fandom.

But it's the picture of Faith that gives her the heebie-jeebies.

"I'll keep that in mind," she replied. "Um. Not to pry but who's this girl in the photo with you?"

[needsaparrot]

"I'd say look out for people acting weird, but around here how would you tell," Xander added, setting the waffle-iron, then making his way back from the kitchen. "Which photo?"

Once he reached Mel, though, he could see which one she was looking at. "Ah, yeah. That's Faith."

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

"Faith?" Mel asked as her mind went back to some of the journal entries from her old library back home. "Isn't she the slayer who went bad?"

[needsaparrot]

"For a while, yeah."

Xander picked up the picture and studied it with a slight smile, then propped it against a stack of dvds. "This was after that."

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

Mel opened her mouth to say something and then quickly shut it again.

She looked at the picture carefully before finally asking "You look happy together. Where is she now?

[needsaparrot]

Good question, though Xander knew what he'd prefer to think. "Gone." It hadn't been hard to say for a while, though it wasn't easy; it just was. "She died when we destroyed the hellmouth in Sunnydale."

[cantjossme.livejournal.com]

Mel didn't often get that feeling when someone supposedly walked over your grave, but she was getting it now and shivered slightly.

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that," she said but her mind was flashing back to her little jaunt in the woods and the last form (http://cantjossme.livejournal.com/9500.html) her "spirit guide" had taken. "I read a little bit about her from the watcher journals in my time."