A Few Key Sunnydale Alum

It's not a ( trial. )

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He's left to cool his heels outside afterwards, for about fifteen minutes. No sound at all emerges from the room -- and no psychic aura either, if he's listening for one.

The door opens, and closes again very quickly behind the person who's slipped through.

It's Andrew.

February 14th, 2007
Manhattan

Nobody on the street (not even the beat cop on the corner) seems to notice anything odd about the fact that very well-dressed people, singly or in pairs or larger groups, have been walking into the closed-for-repairs underground parking garage and not walking out. Nor do they notice anything odd about the people in question, even those whose faces don't appear remotely human.

As with one particular group, centered around a tall figure with a lionlike face.



Angel has drawn the line at wearing the House Varadeem livery, but each of them sports a badge of sorts with Vayan's sigil -- the same intricate pattern on the ring Angel's already wearing. It doesn't make them blend in with the Rrhayaowr, even the human-looking ones, but it makes certain matters clear to the others waiting in line. There's already delighted gossip making its way through the crowd, glances and whispers.

They've learned the club's name by this time, and it's making the oldest members of the team very uneasy. There's a muttered explanation while they wait, kept vague against the sharp ears of the rest of their party. Aequitas: the Latin word for justice. It's just a little too close for comfort to another place they knew once, with a name meaning mercy.

Probably just a coincidence.

The heavy doors at the far end of the lot are just opening, and two big burly demons taking up positions to either side. A ripple goes through the assembled beings, and the line starts to slide forward like (Andrew tries not to think it) like a snake.

Columbia University
Monday, October 16, 2006
2:10pm

"Professor Ulbrich?" Jonathan's been hovering in the hallway in what he hopes is the manner of a student waiting to talk to a busy teacher, and moves forward as the old man steps out of his office. "Sorry to bother you again, but --"

Ulbrich's eyes sharpen again behind his glasses, and the glance he turns on Jonathan is remarkably unfriendly. "Are you," he sniffs, turning to lock his office door.

"...sir?" Trying to sound confused, instead of alarmed.

"You and your, mm, colleague weren't entirely honest with me about how you came by that passage." He pockets his keys, picks up his battered leather briefcase, and straightens his glasses to glare at Jonathan again. "The news may take a while to trickle in here, but it does make it eventually. Would you mind telling me exactly what you two have to do with poor Mr. Rosen?"

"Funny," says Jonathan, making the snap decision to go on the counteroffensive, "I was gonna ask you the same question." He takes out his card, and holds it out so that the Angel Investigations logo is clearly visible.

Ulbrich squints at the card, and frowns. "I see. Small wonder you lied, if you suspect me of some sort of, mm, foul play --" he pronounces the words with a fastidious sort of irony, as though handling them with tongs -- "but I can tell you in all honesty that I've never meet the boy, and I don't see what you might think I could possibly have to do with it."

"Really? 'Cause we have to wonder where else on this campus he might have learned Sulcaric."

A heavy sigh of irritation. "You didn't listen to a word I said Wednesday, did you. I couldn't have taught him to speak Sulcaric that fluently. No human being could have. And he didn't learn it out of a book, either, I can tell you that now that I've seen the tape."

The card doesn't seem to have quite had the effect Jonathan was hoping for. He repockets it slowly. "What do you mean?"

"I had to go over it half a dozen times before I caught it, but the tonal modulation's unmistakable. He's speaking in the infantile mode."

"The what?"

"The child's mode. Ethkelt t'hyskraen." Jonathan starts at the word, but the professor doesn't notice; he's sliding into full-on lecture mode. "I think 'milk-speech' would be the closest, mm, approximate translation. A poetic way of referring to the mode in which Sulcar children first learn to verbalize, while they're still young enough to be nursing. It's an interesting cognate to the way we speak of something learned in early childhood as 'with his mother's milk.' Leading some to speculate that we may have, mm, borrowed the figure of speech from the Sulcaric. A speculation I consider thoroughly unfounded and highly unlikely," he adds with another sniff.

"What's that word again? The one you translated as milk?"

"T'hyskraen," Ulbrich repeats. "The part of it that actually means milk is hysk; the rest of it ... well, it's a complex construction. The last syllable's a root word that can mean 'swallow' or 'acquire' or 'master', in the sense of mastering a skill or a body of knowledge. Internalize, I suppose, is the common thread there. Which means that there's a pun of sorts in the compound phrase. It could mean literally 'the speech connected to the drinking of milk' or even 'the speech that one drinks with milk', but a much, mm, clearer way to render it would be 'the speech of nurslings' or 'the speech one learns while nursing'." A dusty chuckle. "Babytalk, in other words."

"Babytalk?" Jonathan echoes in disbelief. "I saw the translation. It didn't look much like babytalk to me."

The professor shrugs. "The usage might be metaphorical. My point is, that poor boy theoretically could have constructed and memorized a set speech in Sulcaric for some bizarre reason, but for him to have found the, mm, exceedingly rare source material on the t'hyskraen mode -- it's beyond the bounds of plausibility. Personally I'm becoming inclined to give a little more weight to your theory of a bodyswap."

"I don't think so." At the professor's questioning look, Jonathan reluctantly adds, "He was repeating the name of one of his friends. Whatever else is going on, I think it's still him in there."

After a short silence, Ulbrich gives another sigh and starts shuffling down the corridor. "In that case, I confess I'm baffled. It simply shouldn't be possible. And lord knows enough human scholars have tried."

Jonathan chews his lower lip for a moment, trailing at the older man's side. "Professor," he says slowly, "could that word actually mean something like 'the speech one learns from drinking hysk?"

Ulbrich turns a startled glance on him. "Interesting you should suggest that. I seem to recall that one of Catherine Harkness's students once wrote a paper on that very question. Suggesting a semi-mystical philosophy on the part of the Sulcar themselves, a belief that the hysk is somehow, mm, transubstantiated directly into knowledge, or into intelligence. Absurd, on the face of it. Sulcar aren't given to superstition of that sort; that's much more a human kind of wish-fulfillment."

"Wish-fulfillment?"

"Of course." That dusty-dry chuckle again. "What human being wouldn't want to be able to simply swallow something and become smarter than we are?"

Historically, as a rule, the funeral of a Slayer has been a quiet affair. On occasion there have been families to make the arrangements, but most of the time, the parents and (if any) siblings have long since lost all contact with their daughter, whether deliberately or not. The Council has always seen to it that the Slayer is given a decent burial: a hardwood box, and six feet of consecrated ground, and someone to say the words, and the Watcher as sole mourner.

This, like so many other things since the Call, has changed.



It's the first time they're all back together again in over a year, the women who came to Sunnydale as Potentials and fought the First Evil there as Slayers. Caridad and Chao-Ahn, Rona and Vi and Shannon, half a dozen others. Many of them died in the battle at the Hellmouth ... but Kennedy is the first of them to have died since then.

So they're here, and so are newer Slayers who had Kennedy as their first combat instructor, and field Slayers who had her as their team leader. And so are at least one ex-lover, and at least one current one. About four-fifths of the Slayers are in somber black; the rest are in equally somber white.

Kennedy's parents and her half-sister are here somewhere too, in the crowd. Buffy and Giles are talking to them.

Soon someone's going to stand up front and start the memorial service.

The Warehouse (Angel's HQ)
June 9, 2005, 8:30pm

When your boss is nocturnal and so is most of your clientele, the working day tends to start shortly after sunset.

It's not quite dark yet. This is a slow time of day, the gradual easing into work mode: finishing breakfast/dinner, sharpening weapons, talking out plans for the rest of the night.

There's a knock at the door.