***"Yours if you want. Your choice."
The short, perky blonde smiles and holds out Zoe's sword across her open palms. It's kind of glowing, and so's the woman floating behind the blonde, but this strikes Zoe as perfectly normal - don't all girls glow?
Zoe grins back. "Yeah," she says, and reaches out, takes the sword. Something uncurls in her chest and rolls through her out to the fingers and toes, "Zoe?", almost orgasmic, "Zoe? Zoe?", or better, she's glowing,
"Aaah!"
Zoe's head jerks up, sending a stray bead of drool flying onto the next desk over. The rest of the class is laughing.
"Was that an insight into the basic proportionality theorem, Miss Carter, or did you stick your finger in an electrical socket?"
The class is laughing harder.
"Uh," Zoe says, blinking, "The, uh, ratio?"
The teacher continues to look expectant. She looks at the board frantically. "It's still the same triangle?"
The teacher looks a little surprised. "Well, Miss Carter seems to have unconsciously stumbled upon an actual observation. You see when we draw the line parallel..."
Zoe looks down at her notes and lets his voice drift off into a background monotone. She realizes she's still holding on to the metal tube attaching the desktop to the chair. And what's really strange is that the metal under her hand seems crumpled, almost like someone had squeezed it.
***
Brianna takes one look at her at lunch and spits orange juice through her nose.
Lisa nearly does the same at seeing Brianna caught off-guard.
"I'm not sure which is more pathetic," Brianna says when she's recovered, "That you had no idea what you were doing, or that you would have done it if you did."
Zoe says "Huh?" but Lisa rolls her eyes. "Vague much?"
"Letting yourself be subsumed like that... obviously a case of an insufficient sense of identity," Brianna goes on. "Coupled with a suppressed feeling of dissociation from your peer group - meaning us and those drama losers, Lisa - you're looking for meaning in amalgamation with a greater purpose? I hate to imagine your disillusionment when you realize the futility of it all."
"Er?" Zoe says.
Brianna's eyes suddenly go blank. "Having chosen, you will have to choose," she intones.
"Right," Lisa says, "Now how about this "Bend It Like Beckham" sequel they're talking about, hm?"
Brianna looks at Zoe through narrowed eyes and scoots a little away from her at the table, but that's hardly out of the ordinary.
***
There are a few awkward moments - soccer balls kicked implausibly far, set pieces picked up too easily - but mostly Zoe finds the strength isn't there unless she specifically reaches for it, and she mostly doesn't. Sword-practice sometimes, for the sheer delight of it, and once to unstick her father's car in a snowy parking lot, but mostly life unfolds in the same old misadventures, and when the bus shows up she honestly doesn't know why they might be looking for her.
***
The Bus.
The Bus is like that first shot of Munchkinland, incongruous color on a black-and-white street, or maybe like horses flying free from a circus-bright carousel when Mary Poppins steps from a grimy London sidewalk into a picture. The Bus has its own logic. Once a schoolbus, traces of schoolbus yellow survive between wild spirals and paisleys of purple and green. Curtains hang behind the windows of the back half. The roof is part luggage rack, part antennae forest, part... sun deck? Zoe has, eventually, given in and watched "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" for the wonderful strangeness of Elrond in glitter eye makeup, and for a moment she wonders if she's going to be carried off by travelling drag queens.
The Bus is parked in front of her house.
Getting off the Bus are a motley set of people none of whom seem to be in drag at the moment - a nondescript young man with a clipboard, a taller man with an eyepatch and a relaxed grin, a dark-haired young woman who looks Zoe up and down with a faint sneer, and a red-haired woman who looks strangely familiar.
"Yup," the red-head says, as Zoe walks up with Bergie, "That's her."
"Hi there," says the man with the eye patch, stepping forward a little but maintaining a polite distance, and Zoe says "Uh, hi?" as the dark-haired girl turns perplexedly to the woman and says "Um, what?"
"I'm Xander Harris," the man says, while the woman turns to the dark-haired girl and murmurs something. "No, sweetie," the girl replies, and Xander's turning back to them, saying, "Hey, is there - " and Zoe is considering edging around them and running up the front walk and locking the door, and the young man with the clipboard starts something like "We represent -" and the dark-haired girl, over all of them, says, "Look, he *can't* be, that's a *trannie*, Will," and everybody's eyes go wide and Zoe sits down on the grass hard and wonders what the heck is going on.
***
This is apparently a question that everyone would like answered.
Also on Zoe's list of questions: why she hasn't simply told these strange people off, why that red-head still looks familiar, whether the big gay rainbow on the back of the bus is, in fact, a big *gay* rainbow and if this is some sort of bizarre prank of Lisa's, or maybe a recruitment drive.
But she knows it isn't, knows that somehow the bus is Something Else. As soon as she saw the bus she felt it: that she was standing at a corner, about to turn around it and see something. A whole new street. With rainbow alien schoolbuses on it.
Xander makes introductions: clipboard is Andrew, red-head is Willow, stick-up-her-ass-transphobe is Kennedy. Who keeps shooting her little glares out of the corners of her eyes. Zoe is a little surprised she's not sticking out her tongue... she's practically pouting at Willow.
Willow, on the other hand, seems puzzled, but like it's a *neat* puzzle. Zoe thinks she ought to feel dissected under that stare but it's too warm, too benevolent.
Andrew has surprised Zoe (and apparently everyone) by making a contribution: he has suggested they just sit on the lawn rather than go to a cafe or into Zoe's house, two things Zoe did not want to do. Moreover, he has produced from the bus two ratty lawn chairs and a pitcher of what looks like lemonade, casting an air of normalcy over the impromptu lawn conference. Zoe still doesn't trust them enough to drink the lemonade, and she's nervous that more aspersions on her girlness will be cast in the hearing of her neighbors - or, for that matter, that anyone might notice them and associate her with the big weird bus. Willow seems to pick up on her unease and assures her no one will pay any attention, that ignorance is blisser than "things like this".
"Then why," Zoe asks narrow-eyed, "Should I stay and listen to you?"
Andrew, buoyed by the success of the lawn chairs, is about to launch into something - Zoe will bet it would be long and rambling - until a shake of the head from Xander cuts him off.
Zoe gets the impression Xander's usually the one who runs the show - whatever the show is - but he's got that particular kind of confused expression, the one that says "I don't want to say anything offensive but god I have no idea what would or wouldn't be".
So it's Willow who leans forward from the other lawn chair and says, "I'm sorry about our confusion earlier." Kennedy, beside her, rolls her eyes, which Willow quiets with a hand on her thigh.
"A little over a year ago, we were involved in -" "*You* performed," Kennedy cuts in, earning another gentle pat of the hand, "You could call it a project to develop untapped potential. Potentials."
Zoe thinks she might hear a capital there.
"Since then, we've been working on identifying those girls,"
Girls, notices Zoe
"And putting them in touch with resources for training, assistance, research, weapons..."
Weapons?? Zoe thinks.
"We think it's better for girls to understand what they are and what they can do," Willow says.
Zoe is starting to have a sort of tingle in the back of her mind that's telling her there's something she should be putting together here.
"Sometimes they've already figured it out," Willow continues (it seems to be a well-practiced speech).
Something she should be thinking of
"Sometimes it's caused problems,"
that she's forgotten maybe
"Sometimes it's solved them,"
something she's really going to kick herself for in a minute
"Sometimes they've hardly noticed," Willow says, and pauses like she's about to diverge from the script.
"Oh wait," Zoe says, "You mean like how I can crush steel tubing now?"
"Yep, pretty much like that," Xander says, and yup, Zoe's kicking herself. How do you just forget you can crush steel tubing? Well, how often do you *try* to crush steel tubing? It's not like it comes up on a regular basis, you never sit down in class and find out you're having a pop quiz on steel-crushing, and, okay, everyone's looking at her like she's a little zoned out. A little shaken... sharp turn at that corner.
"Heh... eheh" she says. "Oh. Wait. I guess that's why you look kinda familiar."
This last is to Willow; Kennedy, predictably, frowns at her.
"But I don't *get* it," she says. "It's only ever been girls. I mean, every single Slayer, ever, and all the new ones... could something have gone *wrong*?" It's the affronted incredulity of someone whose hero has failed them, and the quick search for someone else to blame. "What did you *do*?" she scowls at Zoe. "You can't really be a Slayer."
Zoe doesn't know Slayers from slingbacks, but she knows that face. It's the face of every popular kid shutting her out of the clique, every blackball, every rejection from the biggest, most exclusive club of all: the girl club. This "Slayer" snobbishness is just an added detail; Alien Bus Street is apparently the same street she's been walking down forever.
Well, hello street smarts. Over a year in Salem dealing with outing catastrophes? Zoe is getting *good* at this.
"Hey," she just says, smiling, "It makes sense, 'cause I *am* a girl. Okay, I was born with a dick, good for you, but the, whatever it is, potential, I guess it's smart enough to look where it counts." Just the barest trace of emphasis on "it's".
And it does make sense - now that she thinks about it, the power in the sword was distinctly *feminine*... in a way that had nothing to do with makeup and voice, and everything to do with, like, what being female really meant to her. Like strength. She realizes the corner is still there, she's still turning. Is that what this bus is for, to carry her off to some life that being a girl is really about? Is that *why* she's a girl, to meet these people?
Andrew is snickering quietly over the insult to Kennedy - it looks like the magical mystery bus is not all peace and love - and Willow peers at her for a second and says "Coool," in this very satisfied voice, like Zoe has somehow imparted some deep insight into The Nature of Whatever-the-heck.
Kennedy looks back and forth between them, shoves herself to her feet, and stomps back onto the bus.
"So, uh," Andrew says, "Is it, like, uh. Is it a problem for you? Like, uh, with people? Because" as if answering her question, "You can come with us. You would be welcome and accepted with your differences." He sounds kind of smarmy, but she's less annoyed when he ends with a quiet "It can be hard to be different."
"Right," Xander says, "Like my somewhat impetuous colleague has brought up, some girls and, uh, girls, do find that they're happier in a community where there are other Slayers. We've got a kind of school going, a place for girls who've run away or got kicked out..."
Kicked out? Zoe wonders to herself how much worse this Slayer thing could be than having to explain to your parents their son thinks of herself as their daughter.
"Not just kicked out," Willow says, like she's reading Zoe's mind. Heck, she might be. "We encourage the runaways to, to not. We do everything we can to help Slayers stay connected to their families. Some parents even move to Cleveland with them."
Oh great, Zoe thinks, like I haven't uprooted this family enough.
"But it's fine to do it as boarding school," Xander says. "We even have a trial extension program: Slayer Night School." He pauses. "Actually it's mostly night school."
"You guys keep mentioning Slayers," Zoe says a little nervously. This casual talk about really leaving... it kind of sings in her, like the edge of her sword, and at the same time scares her. "Does that involve any actual, uh, Slaying?"
Xander and Willow exchange a significant glance. "I take it that's a "no" on local supernatural activity, then," Xander says, and Andrew suddenly gets very excited and starts marking things on his clipboard. "No rise in unexplained or unusual deaths? Attacks by beasts or persons from mythology or folklore? Possessions, hauntings," he sighs a little, "Grantings of wishes?"
"Larson finally has a couple facial hairs," Zoe mutters. "And there's Brianna. Uh... you guys are kind of scaring me."
She feels a little dizzy, like she's been turning that corner steadily and it's still whizzing by her and she must have turned more than a full circle by now and she still hasn't seen all the way around it.
"Some of the Slayers really seem to draw activity," Andrew says officiously. "Others do not. We are doing a study."
"Just a survey," Willow says a little apologetically.
"With statistical analysis," Andrew says proudly.
"On *deaths*," Zoe says. "Um?"
***
Eventually, the spinning stops. The setting sun casts long shadows across the lawn as Willow and Xander gently explain what a Slayer is, and what a Slayer does - can do, if she wants. Zoe finds it all kind of crazy, but then, how much more crazy than being given, in a dream, the strength to crush a metal desk frame in real life? They both emphasize that it's not an obligation, just an option.
It's an option that could see her on a bus tonight, leaving Salem.
She's not turning any more, but she's hanging, she's spun out down an icy road and now she's teetering on the edge, halfway through the guard rail, and she's tense, coiled, braced, she wants to *move*, she wants to act, push herself out and land somewhere solid. Somewhere warm. Somewhere that glows. If only she knew which way to jump.
She thinks she could just stand up and walk into the house and they wouldn't dare come to the door and bring their vampires and demons into the bright light of her mother's sterile kitchen.
And she could curl up in her room, hollow, while her mother tells her, all rigid concern, that she'll never have a place, that this choice she wants to make will get in the way of everything she wants to do.
Cleveland, despite being a hellmouth, is definitely a place. And being a Slayer - it's a different choice she could make. Has already made, in one sense, but she's free to stand by it or stand down, to take the next step or to walk away. It's always her choice. They keep saying that.
While she thinks, they tell her things. They mention that there are two Slayers training out of Pittsburgh, that Cleveland is Slayer central, that she should definitely call for help if things - bad things - do start happening. That they could arrange for someone to drive in to work with her once a month if she wants, a sort of Slayer Reserve, that she should try to come to one of the big seasonal meets in Cleveland and get some intensive practice and try fighting with a group, that Slayer powers are not to be used on humans except in self-defense and that if she abuses them the Slayer Enforcer Team *will* come around for a little Slayer Remedial Education. Zoe's a little offended by this since she's had them, responsibly, for over a year - barely even using them for soccer glory - but they just shake their heads and say there've been a few problems. They ask whether anyone else has approached her, tried to recruit her for anything, and beg her to *please* notify them if someone does.
Zoe asks how she knows they're not the ones she should watch out for.
Willow smiles at her. "But you do know," she says, and it's kind of maddening, but also true. She can just *tell*.
She wishes that meant she knew whether to go with them or not.
Andrew and Xander go through a list of other questions - when did she take up martial arts, did she ever had prophetic dreams before the change, how about after, what did she feel when it happened. Embarrassed, Zoe looks at Willow. "It felt good," she says. "That's what they all say," Andrew says.
At some point Kennedy emerges sheepishly from the bus, tucking a cellphone back into her pocket.
"Um," she tells Zoe, scuffing her feet a little, the brash Slayer momentarily a girl a few years older than Zoe, "I'm sorry about earlier. I was out of line." She pauses and actually smiles, wry and self-mocking. "Also I was dumb. I mean ignorant. I mean between the vampires and the werewolves and the body-switching curses, a little transsexuality is a happy, friendly thing."
Zoe is not thrilled to get classed with the vampires and the werewolves, but maybe that's the kind of context that seems normal to a Slayer. "Thanks," she says, "I don't even bite."
"Faith?" Xander asks Kennedy. "Faith," she confirms, nodding. "The wonders of remedial education," Xander says expansively.
It should be helpful, encouraging, to get that kind of change in attitude that fast, but it's not. It just rocks the balance back, that she can't tell herself they're the same kinds of jerks she'd find anywhere, that dealing daily with all that weirdness means they really are more open-minded than the good people of Salem, PA. She could get on the Alien Bus and not be an alien, plunge herself into a big rainbow of Slayers and witches and people who change shape all the time.
A rainbow where half the colors are *black*, she reminds herself. Vampires, Slaying, blood, death?
Xander must catch her looking back and forth between the bus and her house.
'You don't have to decide right now," he says, "There's always time. We'd like to - "
And she bursts into tears. "No," she sobs, "I have to decide, I can't just have that there, hanging..."
Andrew cautiously hands her a glass of lemonade and a couple of tissues.
"It's a challenging time," he says. "To guide you in your new Slayerhood, we have a variety of informational handouts..."
He pulls papers from his clipboard, sheets of phone numbers, websites. "There's a LiveJournal community," he says helpfully, pointing it out. "And some introductory flyers on the Slaying basics, these are really good, Xander and I wrote this one for the family and friends without the superpowers..."
She looks at them blankly: 10 Essentials of Vampire Safety, Emergency Humane Werewolf Traps, Five Signs Your Son or Daughter May Be Committing Unspeakable Rites to an Elder Power, And Who To Call.
Elder Powers. She could go study Unspeakable Rite Prevention and never see another sine or cosine again.
She sits there. It's getting darker, but the bold lettering (someone had way too much fun with the fonts) is still easy to read.
Xander's phone rings. "Giles," he says over his shoulder, after turning away to answer it, "Wants to know how things are going, and he says Buffy's standing there sort of bobbing on her toes ready to snatch the phone the second he looks done."
Something passes across Willow's face, something glad, something glowing. Zoe's never been this good at seeing things before, and maybe she's never going to be again, it's something about the bus, something they're doing. But she suddenly knows that Willow never left home, that she never got on a bus, that these people have always been her home. She watches Kennedy watch Xander talking quietly on the phone, and sees envy - *she*'s ridden the Slayer bus. Maybe a long way, further than Cleveland.
Zoe looks back at the house. Her dad's at a staff meeting, her mom must be running late - again - and Richie, wherever he is, is probably scowling. Lisa's playing solitaire instead of history homework, Larson's got his thumb firmly on a game controller and a couple siblings climbing on him, and she wouldn't leave this for anything.
Zoe smiles. She glows. "I'll see about the correspondence course," she says. "Maybe one of those meets... I'm glad to have met you guys, get this strength to crumple metal thing figured out. Just one thing, before you go... if magic can tell I'm a girl, do you think it could point that out to my mom?"
::End::
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