Lots of interesting takes on the main requirements for this week's Sunday 100 - definitely worth a read.

Where are these?

So. I've got part one of the Adam/FE "conversation" done, and so far neither have appeared in it. Kind of like how it's going, though. Want I should serialize it? Part two may be a few days.

Eh, I gotta motor, but here's Part One:

Conversation With the Monster

Part One: The Watchers

“You see,” said Xander, “the First doesn’t perceive time the way you and I do.” Dawn leaned toward the window while Xander continued gesticulating wildly at the young woman sitting across the diner booth from them. She knew he’d come to a peace with the whole thing—the Hell the First had put them through, Anya’s quick, brutal death, the searching and teaching that came afterward. The last twenty years had moved at a breakneck pace. Xander was only 41, but she could see a bit of gray in his hair. Being watchers could do that to you.

“We thought it was about Good and Evil,” continued Xander, excitedly, “but that was all just bull shit.”

The young woman, Rosa, had cornered them at the Antiquarian Bookstore they’d been poring through. Dawn thought it was funny that Xander never used to read anything deeper than X-Men. Now, it was everything she could do to draw him out from underneath the books. He’d spent the last twenty years trying to understand what happened that day, and now that he thought he had it, this girl pops up out of nowhere, claiming to know everything—about the Slayers, the vampires, the Watcher’s Council. She sought out Xander and Dawn for knowledge, and Xander was more than happy to share.

Rosa wanted to know about the First, about the creation of a multitude of Slayers around the globe, and Xander may well be the world’s greatest authority on the subject. Even Wesley consulted him regularly, and that was a day she never thought she’d see.

“So,” Rosa interrupted, “how did you find out all this?” The girl looked dubious and enraptured at the same time. Rosa hadn’t even touched her coffee, she was so taken by Xander’s story. Dawn wondered if she should be jealous, then put the thought aside.

“Well,” said Xander, with a smirk. “Dawn and the rest weren’t the only ones having conversations with dead people that night, and I’ve had more than one or two myself. This particular conversation I learned of when I consulted an oracle at a monastery up outside Chico. My buddy Oz is a monk up there. He’s taken a vow of silence, but it’s kind of hard to tell.” Dawn giggled, Rosa seemed lost. “Anyway, the oracle helped me uncover a few things, led me to some tomes where the First's minions recorded this and that. Anyway, I was back in England—we live there most of the time—where I learned that, as scared as we were of the First? The First was scared of a few things itself.”

Victor, great beginning. Want more.

Heh. Victor, has anyone thought to poke at Rosa yet?

One small typo-thing:

that was a day she never thought she’d seen.

thought she'd see?

Oh, and that line about Oz and the vow of silence? BWAH!

(Perkins, sorry, I conked out and went to bed. The Sunday 100 is a weekly fic drabble: 100 words on the subject or theme handed down by the group's head, in this case Princess Twilite. It's at livejournal; you don't need to be a member to read. Just enter the group name, Sunday 100, in search, and that should bring it up. The subject changed by week.)

Even Wesley consulted him regularly, and that was a day she never thought she’d seen.

Typo aside, neither did I. But am I enjoying it... oh, boy. I am. Keep going, Victor!

I have a drabble for the Sunday 100 even though it's Monday...Worst Day/Fear.

Riley from Into the Woods.

Riley didn’t want to want to be here, on this grimy mattress, holding this dirty, needy girl. But being here felt more real than just a few hours before when Buffy was making love to him. The vampire’s bites sent shivers of pleasure-pain through him. She needed him and he was using her, he didn’t feel like a soldier boy. Someone’s tool. Riley had the power, the control. If he wanted he could slide a stake through her, feel her body seize and explode, covering him in dust. He gripped her hair tighter.

“Harder.” A few minutes more and---

“Riley!”

askye, nice!

Thanks! I loved yours!

I got inspired after reading one too may drabbles that had to include "worst day" or "fear" in the actual story or the drabbles were schmoopy. It's fear! there's no schmoop in fear!

Conversation With the Monster

Part Two: The Monsters

The First manifested inside what used to be called the Initiative. Once, a madwoman tried to splice humans and demons into soldiers here. Like so many of them, the madwoman served the First.

“All of them, eventually, serve me,” the First thought, morphing into the image of the Slayer.

Adam was sitting on a rock, fist to forehead like the statue. The monster looked up, and saw his former enemy.

“You are not Buffy Summers,” it said, matter-of-factly.
“No,” said the First. “I’m much, much more.”
Adam regarded the First for a moment.
“I am not alive.”
“You never were.”

Adam seemed to consider that for a second. He rose to his feet, and extended his arms in front of him. The laser sights behind his eyes gleamed red as he analyzed his hands.

“Wasn’t I?” asked Adam. “There was flesh here once. Bits of bone linked by wire and metal. Blood ran through my veins. Blood and electricity. Radioactive trace elements. I had a heart, of sorts. A soul.”

“No,” said the First, in a surprisingly gentle voice. “Never that.”
Adam was silent again for a moment.
“I was alive, though. And I served a purpose.”

The First had to concede the point. It was the very reason that it had summoned this strange shade back from Hell.

“And what was your purpose, Adam? What role in the world did you fulfill in your brief, violent life?”

Adam trained his eye sights on the first. He knew that this was not his body, that he was incorporeal, a mere reflection of his former self, but his sense responded much the same as they did in life. “A matter of perception,” he thought. Already, he realized he could see things differently. His comprehension of his senses was… different. Bigger.

“I was very small,” said Adam, his voice almost weak with the realization.
“I was created… my mother created me to destroy, and first, I thought that was my role, but that seemed… inefficient. I drew the dark things to me, the vampires and demons. I pitted the Slayer against her allies, and drove the soldiers to distraction and weakness. I sought to make them all stronger, to instigate war and cull the weak. To remake the world into my image—no humans, no demons. All of them linked through cybernetics and computer chips. Man, magic and monster, at peace in a world of order.”

The First furrowed Buffy’s brow at that. It didn’t know what it expected from this conversation, just that Adam knew something it would need to understand. Like so many who’d served it, Adam had once tried to remake the world in his own image. And failed.

The First needed to understand why it failed.

Adam looked up at the image of his enemy before him—the woman who’d killed him.

“You need to understand,” said Adam. “I was defeated, but ultimately, I succeeded.”