Unknown Factors (Book One)

Ch.5: Just relax now

  "Great. No Word of Valios."

  "Not even a syllable of Valios."

  "Which means I'm one step closer to melting in a sea of molten Hellfire, yeah?"

  "You shouldn't talk like that. Yeah, okay, so you can't kill anymore but there are other fun things you can do. You'll adjust." Willow tried to cheer up the vampire.

  "Adjust?" Spike turned around, and we stopped walking away from the museum. "And what, end up like the three of you? No thank you."

  "Here it goes." Xander said when Spike turned back around. "'We just can't leave him here to stake himself. It's not right.'" Xander mocked what Willow had said earlier.

  "I should think you would be glad to greet the end of days. Neither one of you is making much of a go at it, and I don't even know about you." He pointed at me. "You. Kids your age are going off to university. You've made it as far as the basement. And Red here, you couldn't even keep dog boy happy. You can take the loser out of high school, but...." It seemed he was intentionally trying to piss them off.

  "I see what you're doing. You're trying to get us to dust you." Willow shrugged and smiled.

  "Am not. I just don't want pity from geeks more useless than I am."

  "We're not useless. We-We help people. We fight the forces of evil."

  "Buffy fights the forces of evil. You're her groupies. She'd do just as well without you. Better, I'd wager, since she wouldn't have to go about saving your hides all the time." The vampire retorted.

  "That is so not true. We're part of the team. She needs us."

  "Or....you're just the same tenth-grade losers you've always been, and she's too much of a softy to cut you loose."

  "Excuse me, Willow." I said calmly. When she moved to the side, I walked past her and went up to Spike. The next thing anyone knew, the bleached blond was on the ground.

  "Aud!"

  "What the bloody Hell was that for?!" Spike shouted while holding his jaw.

  "Look, I know you're evil, and you two are on Buffy's side," I said while glancing at everyone. "I also know your little spats are none of my business, but I'd rather not have the world ending any time soon, okay? You can't eat if you're dead and food doesn't exist anymore. So, can we just try to find this Word of Valios before the demons do if they haven't already?" I asked.

  "You could have said all that without punching me!" Spike rose back to his feet while still rubbing his jaw.

  "Yeah, well, you were being a major dick." And I walked off. It took a second, but the others were soon following behind. When I walked through the thick, wooden door at Pops's house, I immediately went to look for him. "Pops!" I called out.

  "Over here." A raised hand came from the other side of the couch. "Ow." The place was trashed, so I had to go around and over a bunch of stuff to get to the older man. He was sitting there while wrapping gauze around his bleeding hand.

  "Who did this?" I growled.

  "The Vahrall." Clenching my hands into fists, Giles motioned for me to sit down. "Wait until Buffy returns, we will come up with a plan of action then." So, forced to swallow my anger, I did as I was told. Thankfully, Buffy got back not too long after.

  "What happened?" She asked while looking around.

  "It's my fault." Pops said. "I should have known."