My Life is Different Ch. 04

It was Friday night. Most people my age were going to parties or taking their significant others out on a date. Some folks were staying home with their significant others and having naked, sexy fun together.

Buffy and I were getting together with Spike so we could track down a skinwalker and kill it.

Or maybe we'd track down the skinwalker and just barely escape with our lives. Although we did the thing where we just barely escaped with our lives Thursday night. I really didn't want to be repetitive. If you do the same thing two nights in a row, that's an early warning sign of falling into a rut.

Spike showed up with a weapon that was six feet long and looked like the offspring of a spear and a battle axe.

"It's called a halberd," Spike said, "These things were the assault weapons of the fifteenth century."

To which I replied, "Well, if we have to put down a revolt of English peasants, you're all set."

Buffy came equipped with her favorite battle axe. I'd seen her decapitate a vahrall demon with it last summer. It was a large, heavy axe and the edge of the blade was razor sharp.

And while Spike and Buffy had their large, impressive and deadly weapons, all I had were my nipple clamps and a lock of the skinwalker's hair.

Seriously, I think I'm the bravest of the group. Spike and Buffy had big, heavy weapons and I was walking into battle with nothing more than a lock of hair and tiny, metal jaws that dangled from a slender chain. I ought to get some sort of medal for going into battle like this.

Buffy and Spike wrapped their weapons up in long rolls of cobalt-blue fabric. With their weapons concealed in rolls of blue cotton fabric, they looked far more like fashion design students than armed lunatics, and we were far less likely to get stopped by cops or campus security that way.

Getting stopped by campus police was never fun. They never understood about things like vampires, mok'tagar demons or skin walkers, so it was best to just avoid confrontations with them.

Spike had apparently gotten bored of teasing me about my nipple clamps....either that or he had gotten tired of being hit in the head by Buffy. Buffy didn't approve of Spike teasing me, and she showed her displeasure by punching Spike in the face or smacking his across the back of his skull.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Buffy exclaimed vehemently.

The tracking spell had led us to Lowell House. Lowell House was one of the fraternity houses on campus. There were scores of students living there, and getting in there and killing the skinwalker without being noticed was going to be impossible.

"Why couldn't the skinwalker just hide out in a condemned building or some secret underground lair?" I asked forlornly. There were way too many civilians in Lowell House for Buffy to be doing any slaying in there.

"Maybe we can follow him around and wait for him to go someplace remote," Buffy offered helpfully.

"Okay, I'll go inside and see who is who. The skinwalker is probably disguised as one of the students. I'll find out which one and we can follow him later when he goes off campus."

Buffy and Spike followed me closely and we all hoped for the best. None of us were expecting what we found inside.

Buffy grabbed the door handle to let me inside and that very instant, I heard a loud echo of gunfire coming from the lobby of the frat house.

"Bloody hell," Spike exclaimed and we walked into a scene that looked like it came straight from a Bosnian war zone.

The floor tiles of the lobby wear splattered with fresh blood for as far as the eye could see. There was also blood spattered on the walls and on the full length mirror in the main hall. I spotted the bodies of at least seven students that were lying dead on the floor. One of them had been decapitated, five had been eviscerated and one looked like his neck had been broken. His head was tilted at a very unnatural angle and there was a look of horror frozen on his dead face.

Buffy and Spike's feet made a slurp sound as they walked on the fresh, sticky blood that was covering the floor.

The sound of gunfire was coming from deeper inside the frat house. Apparently somebody was attempting to fight off the skinwalker, but without much success. As we walked forward, I couldn't help but notice that some of the fraternity boys were holding handguns in their numb, dead hands.

"Well, this doesn't look good," Buffy remarked. I couldn't help but think that was probably the understatement of the year.

"What was your first clue?" I asked as I walked through the wet, sticky blood, making more slurping sounds as I walked.

It didn't take long to find the skinwalker. Buffy and Spike really didn't even need my tracking spell anymore. All we really needed to do was follow the sounds of the gunfire and the screaming. There was a full scale war going on in the frat house.

A tall broad-shouldered frat boy was firing a semi-automatic weapon at an impossibly tall humanoid creature in the hallway, just twenty feet from the front door. The creature must have been about ten feet tall and had reddish-brown hair over most of its body. Its shoulders were about six-feet wide and it had strong, white teeth with sharp canines, which it bared at the frat boy who was shooting at him. The creature had a face that looked more like the face of a mountain lion than that of a human being, although there was a malicious intelligence in those eyes unlike anything I've ever seen in the eyes of any large cat.

I think the bullets hurt, but didn't really do any real damage. The gunshots made a lot of noise and spewed spent shell-casings all over the floor, but the shape-sifter refused to die. Instead, he slammed into the frat boy like a truck and there was a disconcerting sound like the sound of breaking ribs or the splintering on the student's spine. After the student dropped his weapon, the skin walker threw him across the room, where he slammed into the far wall with a loud thud.

I took a deep breath and wished I was just about anywhere else. This was a killing field. People here were dying, lots of people were being killed rapidly and in ugly ways. I suddenly felt very small and insignificant and seriously wondered if we had any hope of defeating this big ugly thing.

I almost peed myself, when the skinwalker raised one massive arm, glared, bared his teeth and pointed an absurdly large finger at Buffy, Spike and I.

"YOU," he called out accusingly.

"ME," Spike responded, defiantly, and then he ripped the blue fabric free from his weapon and charged forward, with the naked blade end pointed directly at the skinwalker's chest.

"I'm back, and I'm a bloody predator!!" Spike screamed as he charged forward with extraordinary speed.

Buffy unfurled her weapon and charged forward about a half-second after Spike began his charge. Spike ran straight forward, dead center and Buffy ran forward, aiming at the skinwalker's right flank. The combined, simultaneous attacks made it almost impossible for the skinwalker to defend against both attacks, and the skinwalker chose to focus on Spike.

A massive hand swept sideways and swatted the halberd out of Spike's hand with a loud echoing clatter. Spike was almost knocked over by the impact, but then he regained his footing and leapt high into the air and kicked the skinwalker in the face.

"Meddling child," the skinwalker exclaimed as it swatted at Spike, "I will suck the marrow from your bones!"

The skinwalker swatted violently at Spike with his other massive hand, but Spike was moving too fast and agile for the skinwalker to land a solid blow. Spike barely even got clipped.

Buffy swung her battle axe and connected with the skinwalker's side, just above his hip. The skinwalker roared in anger and grabbed Buffy by the arm. It shook her like a rag doll until she dropped her battle axe and then threw her across the room.

"Gotcha," Spike exclaimed, catching Buffy before she could smash into the wall. They both tumbled to the floor, but neither one of them was hurt by the impact. All things considered we were doing better than we did in our first encounter with the skinwalker.

I had both of the test tubes with the magic water in them, but all the blood and the violence and the screaming had left me too full of fear and paralyzing panic to even attempt to throw one of them at the skinwalker. It was so much bigger now, and there was blood everywhere and the sounds of screaming and gunfire were just so damn loud! My heart was beating like a Don Henley drum solo and my breathing was panicked, almost panting, I was so scared.

Then the skinwalker picked up Buffy's battle axe and cocked his hand back. The battle axe looked huge when Buffy was holding it, but in the skinwalker's massive hand it looked small, and I just knew he could throw it all the way across the room with very little effort. If Spike and Buffy couldn't dodge it, the razor-sharp edge of that axe could cut them open like an evisceration knife, cutting open a chicken.

"Aaarrrggghhhh," the skinwalker bellowed. He bared his teeth and then turned to face another opponent.

Riley Finn, was standing at the other end of the hallway with a high-tech looking weapon. It looked kinda like a rifle, but Riley was firing some sort of electrical discharge from it. There was a sizzling sound as bursts of white electrical energy sped down the hallway and smashed into the skinwalker, knocking him off balance and leaving behind the smell of burning hair.

"Naaʼahóóhai," the doppelganger swore at Riley and cocked his arm back to hurl the battle axe at his new opponent.

With his back turned to me, I suddenly felt braver, and I reached into my book-bag and pulled out one of the test tubes. I hurled my test tube at exactly the same instant that the skinwalker hurled his battle axe. The skinwalker was huge, so I didn't even need good aim. As long as the test tube was hurled down the hall in front of me, it was going to hit some part of the skinwalker's anatomy!

Riley screamed in pain as the battle axe hit him. He tried to dodge and succeeded in getting hit in the leg instead of his the skull. That was an improvement I suppose, but there was still a lot of blood.

At the exact same second that Riley screamed, the skinwalker bellowed in pain as the test tube hit him right between the shoulder blades. Both Riley and the skinwalker were wounded and both were obviously in a lot of pain. And then the skinwalker turned to face me, baring his massive teeth in an expression of rage and hostile intentions.

"Meddling girl-child," the skinwalker swore at me, "What have you done? What did you do to me?"

"Water from the fountain of life, bitch," Spike yelled in response to the skinwalker, "How's it feel?"

"How...?" the skinwalker began to ask, but Buffy reached into my book bag and took the other test tube and threw it right at the skinwalker's face.

"AAIIIGGHHH," the skinwalker bellowed and it looked as if his face was melting. Reddish, pink fluid began to leak from the flesh between the skinwalker's eyes and his nose actually seemed to be melting.

The skinwalker spit at Buffy and looked as it was getting ready to charge, but Buffy grabbed Spike's halberd off the floor and charged at him first.

Sometimes I forget how different Buffy is from normal human beings. Sometimes I forget how strong and fast she is, but when she rushed down the hallway with Spike's halberd, she moved so fast, I could barely even track her with my eyes. It was almost like trying to track a bullet.

When Buffy rammed the halberd into the skinwalker's chest, it didn't just penetrate his flesh, it perforated it. There was a huge gush of blood and Spike's weapon sunk in at least four feet deep. The skinwalker let out a loud, miserable bellow as he was skewered and his lifeblood exploded all over Buffy's face, Spike's halberd and the Skinwalker's torso.

"Aaaiiigghhhhh," the Skinwalker protested loudly and miserably and then he collapsed in a loud and heavy heap.

For several seconds I watched the skinwalker's prone body on the floor. I kept expecting it to get back up and attack us, even more pissed off than ever. That's what the monsters always do in the movies.

Ten seconds went by, twenty seconds, thirty, but he still didn't get up. I let out a sigh of relief. It looked like the skinwalker was really, really dead.

"Hey, I think we did it," I said, with obvious elation, "Let's celebrate!"

Buffy's face and hair were all covered in blood, but she smiled triumphantly and raised up one hand, palm facing me and exclaimed, "Go team Buffy!"

Buffy and I high-fived and I turned to look for Spike in case he wanted to get in on all the hand-slapping excitement, but we were suddenly surrounded.

There were at least a dozen frat boys and they were all carrying semi-automatic handguns, assault rifles or those high-tech electroshock weapons, like Riley had.

Some of the frat boys pointed their weapons at us. The others pointed their weapons at the body of the freshly-killed skinwalker. Nobody was shooting, which I thought was fortunate. Neither Buffy nor I are bulletproof, and looking down the barrel of an assault rifle was a new and frightening experience that had me paralyzed with fear again.

"The H.S.T. is down," Riley yelled from across the room, "I repeat the H.S.T. has been killed!"

"There are two civilians here," yelled a frat boy with an assault rifle pointed me. He said it like it was an accusation, like being a civilian was just as bad as being a child molester or a terrorist.

There was a pause and Riley limped over to where we stood. His left leg was soaked in blood and he could barely stand. He looked pale and shaky. I think he was close to going into shock, due to blood loss.

"They helped to kill the H.S.T.," Riley declared, "Stand down. I'm granting them C.I.A. rights."

"Sir?" said the Alpha Delta frat boy as he lowered the barrel of his weapon. He looked dubious.

"That's an order," Riley said, firmly, "I have to go to the infirmary to get this leg stitched up, but when I get out of surgery, I expect to find that these two have been shown every courtesy due to them."

The guy still looked dubious, but he lowered the barrel of his weapon even lower and said, "Yes sir."

All the other frat boys lowered their weapons and Buffy made some sort of smartass remark about Riley granting us C.I.A. rights and did that mean we were now agents of the Central intelligence agency?

"Ma'am," replied a square-jawed, broad-shouldered frat boy, "Around here C.I.A. stand for comrade in arms. It usually refers to foreign soldiers or foreign law enforcement that aid us on the field of battle overseas. You're the first civilians I've ever seen granted C.I.A. rights."

From the way he said it, the frat boy seemed to think that Buffy and I getting C.I.A. rights was a really big deal, and we should be duly impressed by the honor. Personally I thought we'd earned it. We'd risked out lives to fight that skinwalker, and we'd killed it with improvised weapons, when a bunch of guys with semi-automatic weapons failed.

Trying to get into the spirit of the thing, I asked, "So, do we get a Comrade in Arms party and a rocket launcher?"

The frat boy didn't smile. He didn't even blink. With a totally straight face, he replied, "I can take you to our current base commander. He can give you a briefing on our organization while Agent Finn is receiving medical attention."

* * * * * * * * *

"No way," Buffy gushed when she saw the secret base these guys had underneath their frat house. It was insanely huge. They had an infirmary, an armory, storage rooms, showers, and a mess hall, sleeping quarters, offices and even cells for locking up vampires and demons and stuff. They had a full-sized military base hidden underneath the school! It must have cost millions of dollars to build this!

It was around this time that I figured out these were the commando guys who had captured Spike and put that chip in his head. That must be why Spike disappeared right after we killed the skinwalker. Somehow he must have realized that they coming and he disappeared before they captured him again.

"Doctor Rostenkowski will be briefing you," the frat boy told us, "He's in charge now that Professor Walsh has been arrested."

"What?" Buffy exclaimed, "Professor Walsh used to be in charge of all of this?"

Buffy waved her arm dramatically at all the gun-toting soldiers, scientists and tech-support people going about their duties in the underground secret base, incredulous that our psychology professor could have been secretly in charge of this multi-million dollar secret military base.

About half a second later I blurted out a competing question, "Professor Walsh has been arrested?"

The frat boy rolled his eyes and said, "Doctor Rostenkowski will answer all your questions."

* * * * * * * * * *

Doctor Rostenkowski was a nerdy-looking man in a white lab coat. He was about my height and he wore reading glasses with really thick frames. I guessed that he could be anywhere from his mid-thirties to his early fifties, but I couldn't narrow down his age any better than that. He was an energetic man, who obviously had a lot of responsibilities on his shoulders and he seemed somewhat annoyed that the responsibility of briefing two teenage girls had just gotten added to his list. I also suspected that he didn't fully trust as, as he was flanked by two soldiers with handguns hanging from holsters at their waists.

The soldiers didn't speak. They just stood there, stone-faced, waiting for orders...or possibly for the next surprise attack. Who can say for certain?

"Walsh was arrested about five hours ago," Rostenkowski confirmed, "Two FBI agents came around and arrested her for murder. I don't know all the details, but apparently four scientists at Cal Tech were running tests on some new wonder drug. The FBI claims that the wonder drug was tampered with and the lab animals broke free from their cages and killed most of the research team. The FBI thinks that Professor Walsh is the one who sabotaged the tests."

I was shocked. Professor Walsh was a world renowned scientist. Why would she sabotage the work of other scientists? I was just about to ask Doctor Rostenkowski about that, when he quickly added, "If she's still in custody by the end of the month, our section chief in Washington DC will be sending in somebody to replace her. Until that happens, I'm in charge of the Initiative...well, the Sunnydale base anyway."

"You call yourselves the Initiative?"

"Well, by definition, Initiative is the power or opportunity to take action before your opponent does, and we try to take action against things like vampires before they take action against us. Most vampires are technically American citizens, so we have to be super hush-hush about the very existence of the Initiative. We try to be both proactive and stealthy."

"You didn't take action against that skinwalker before he took action against you," Buffy observed, "He came in here and turned this place into a slaughterhouse before Willow and I showed up."

"Like I said, we try to take proactive action against our opponents," Rostenkowski said, clearly annoyed, "We don't always succeed."

"At any rate," he said, changing the subject, "What's the name of your organization?"

I looked at Buffy and she looked at me. My face felt hot and Buffy looked somewhat embarrassed, but there was no way Buffy was going to lie. We were who we were. Having a cool name wasn't as important as getting results, and we had just scored a major victory against an opponent that had kicked the Initiative's ass.