Author’s notes: This part takes place around the ending of ‘Life Serial’ or more likely shortly afterwards.
The NightCrawler
by Belladonna
Chapter 4
~The seed of evil~
Within all of us there is evil.
Some of us have hidden it deep inside so that it shall never come forth again, and to be forgotten. Within others it is at the surface, visible from a great distance already but covered deep until the very last moment.
But once we take a closer look at it, we will come to realize that it is both ways of evil which we are only able to recognize once it is already too late for everything; too late for us.
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“Warren, why are we doing this again? I mean what can we do about it if we just sit around here in the cellar?” Andrew wanted to know and he had definitely a whining tone in his voice Jonathan also nodded empathically.
“Yeah, Warren, I mean we want to be the new super villains here in Sunnydale, so how do we become that from here?” he agreed with his friend, glancing towards Warren. “We have achieved nothing so far with your last plan other than pissing the Slayer off and almost blowing our cover.”
Warren sighed deeply and leaned back in his chair, taking a closer, scrutinizing look at the two other members of the small group. Andrew was really easy to impress, that was only for everything concerning Star Wars or that had to do anything with some other Science Fiction show on the air. He was an idiot who lived in a fantasy world and strived to achieve some respect or recognition with his at best clumsily control over demons with a dog pipe, to make a name for him in the world with this. No, Andrew was a real nobody, a true nerd and a loser and that was all that Warren needed to know about him, knew about him in fact, and it was the same with Jonathan.
He too had always been a complete loser; that Warren had been able to find out from his stories about high school which the other boy only reluctantly had revealed to him. Jonathan even had wanted to kill himself once because he just was a wimp. What a coward, truly pathetic. And to add to that a real hopeless case who had only been able to make some friends by using magick and other tricks.
No, neither of them had anything he had hoped to have in allies when fought the Slayer, in revenge for the humiliation he’d had to endure at her hands. No in his imagination of a grand battle against the Slayer these geeks hadn’t been included. But for the moment they had to be enough, at least until he decided whether to build some more useful and far less annoying robotic helpers instead.
“For the last time, we have a new plan, a good plan”; Warren sighed again, because of the obvious stupidity of the other guys or simply out of steadily and rapidly growing impatience over them he did not know. “A really brilliant plan and if I may add, one as brilliant as the last one had been that only had a small flaw in it. It hadn’t worked!!” With these last words Warren glared at the others, malice gleaming inside his eyes to underline his statement and point. Andrew and Jonathan however did not appear to notice that at all.
What really pathetic sissies.
“But we won’t let ourselves be discouraged by that now, will we?” Warren asked, arching a brow.
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Ah, the children of today; our youth as wise as they might think themselves to be and yet so inexperienced, innocent as if they would have been born only a few days ago.
But you see, my fellow children of the night, they believe to hold the world within their own hands, to be able to shape it, bend it to their will and wishes; to rule over it.
And still, they do it, unknowing and naïve but also determined and imperturbable in their beliefs the do just that.
Might they be justified?
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“No, definitely not”; Jonathan answered Warrens question and Warren smiled inwardly. Jonathan looked at the others who sat just like he did in the cellar of Warren’s house. Bah, only the fact that it was Warren’s house was far from justifying him being the leader, even if he liked to picture himself just that. Warren was nothing but a show-off who had made himself a name with his technical knowledge and skills. Yes, a name; that was it Jonathan had sought out for his whole life. He so much wanted to be someone, someone who was respected by others and held in high regard. Warren might have achieved this through his self-built robots but it wasn’t real.
Just like his trying to charm himself those friends, popularity and esteem by using magick’s had been. It might have worked out if only Buffy hadn’t ruined everything. Sometimes he hated her even more than he did Warren. But it also had been her who had saved his life, more than once. Why at all, only to treat him again like dirt afterwards?
He would teach her a lesson and then she would be able to see her like he really was, to pay him the tribute he so well deserved. Jonathan glanced around the others and smiled like they were used to from him. Warren might be thinking he was the boss around, the brains of the organisation and maybe that was true, but did his technical knowledge make him leader or just the mere fact that they were sitting in his cellar hole? Hardly, but Jonathan was sure that this was it he obviously thought. What a real show-off!
Jonathan’s eyes stopped upon Andrew and inwardly he felt sorry for the boy. Crap, he was the same age he was, but yet Jonathan could not take him seriously. He was the living embodiment of all he had been in high school, a loser caught inside his dream world full of fantasies. Only that he still was it, really living it. Andrew was all that he never wanted to become once grown up, a cliché made flesh of a true nerdy geek. Inside him Jonathan smiled, for he wasn’t anything other than Andrew, he enjoyed the same things and loved Science Fiction as much as the other boy did, but he had always known to hide it well, to camouflage it with his outer attire.
He never wanted again to be laughed at only because of his likings or the simple fact to be different from others. No, Jonathan would never again be called weak and simple-minded, called stupid by no one ever again. He would show them, especially those two others; show them that he too was strong and…
Why bother? Why did he even try? It wasn’t like they would even ask him to work out details of a plan or to get it ready to be set in motion. His plan to deal with the Slayer, to test her without her knowledge that was, had been rated with the lowest points. It simply wasn’t fair, for he really had tried and his idea had been the most creative and sophisticated of them all; brilliant in fact but they weren’t able to recognize true genius when they saw it. Just like always.
But one day, they would take him seriously. They simply had to.
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Or is it their insecurities that always are holding them back and drive them forward at the same time? The seed of doubt, it grows deep inside man; these small and tiny strings of insecurity, they strive for the surface only to be pushed back into the darkest depths of the mortal soul; buried like the memories of all the uncomfortable things and experiences that humans desperately try to forget.
Is it their lives they cannot cope with; that can change them so much? Or is it something different at all in the end?
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“So, what are we gonna do about it? I mean we still are super villains and all”; Andrew sounded much like an overly excited child, the only thing missing in his childish enthusiasm was bouncing around.
Was it that, the others saw in him?
Only some extremely enthusiastic child with a not so useful talent of training demons?
That couldn’t be it but Andrew felt somehow that Warren did not take him serious at times. With Jonathan it was a bit differently, he was more like him than Warren was. Yet, still Andrew wasn’t really sure about him either. Jonathan knew to hide himself quite well, to cover how he truly was like which he learned to do so well for himself. Andrew felt no hostility coming from Jonathan but Warren made him feel really insecure at times. And if he was honest with himself, it was all the times.
Warren’s carefree attire and demeanour, his casual way of reacting towards others and his seemingly worriless act in everyday situations was something Andrew envied as much as he feared. It might be childish to just imagine or think of this at all but something about Warren or around the other boy caused cold shivers to run down his spine.
Jonathan was, at least in his opinion, way too cool sometimes, but Warren on the other side was really cold all the time.
Andrew ignored these nagging doubts and his own insecurity, cursing himself once again for feeling them in the first place for he was one of them, a member of the super villain trio that had made it its foremost task to reign supreme over Sunnydale. Well, completely unofficially that was. Because should the Slayer ever find out what they planned or still had to plan for the future and not that he had even the slightest idea of what was going on inside Warrens mind – or desired to find out – she surely would make their lives a living hell.
At this Andrew felt himself becoming extremely excited again, these thoughts satisfied him somehow. The Slayer would fear them, of that he was absolutely sure for they were super villains after all, her worst nightmare; her nemesis. Nothing would be able to stop them. No one.
Why did he still feel this insecurity inside, this annoyance at the thought that Buffy in fact could cause their lives to become a living hell for them? Would they truly be able to defeat the Slayer, to outsmart her? What if they failed once again?
On the other hand Andrew would rather cut his tongue out than to let the others know about thoughts and fear of the Slayer. He was a super villain after all, an evil genius like Darth Vader or the Cigarette-Smoking-Man, the worst nemesis and nightmare a hero could have; in this case Buffy. And he always liked the villains more ‘cause they were so cool in every situation. They would never leave themselves wide open, vulnerable. To show weakness was a weakness one had to erase within oneself, never indulge in it or allow it to take control. Andrew wasn’t weak. Warren would never get him down and especially not the Slayer. He would not give in and not be overcome by none of them.
No, Andrew would prove himself against them, against Warren and the Slayer and then he would be the ultimate winner of this game.
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What enables us to see evil within others, to be able to recognize it so easily like it would be tattooed onto our counterparts’ foreheads but not within ourselves?
The answer to this question is actually impossible to find, for it does not exist. There is no answer to that question.
Surprised?
Well, I wasn’t because I know mankind and I know evil, for I have created it, planted the seed within so many mortals, which now is slowly growing to its full bloom.
But again it is all mankind who have taken loving care of this seed, nurtured it to its present glory.
No, my children, it was not me who caused them to shine in their beauty for I only have planted this tiny flower, put its seed into the soil.
It was you, who caused it to finally blossom.
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“Yes, of course we are the super villains, notice the ‘the’?” Warren couldn’t quite banish the slightly sour and impatient undertone from his voice and he caught himself thinking that he actually didn’t want to. Should they see and realize who the boss was, who got to say anything around here and the strange glances the others had thrown towards him for the past few moments weren’t that helpful in maintaining his inner peace not to mention finding it again.
The fact that he was forced to listen to some stupid radio show added to that non-helpfulness immensely and Warren didn’t even want to mention the topic of it.
“I don’t know about you, but I do have a new plan how we can get rid of the Slayer once and for all and to cement our status here in Sunnydale.”
“G-get rid of the Slayer?” Andrew stammered surprised, he almost choked on the words and his potato chips and Jonathan also had to take a deep calming breath. To imagine, thinking about it was one thing, saying it out loud another.
“We never talked about getting rid of the Slayer”; he reminded Warren. “We simply wanted to show her who’s in control.”
“I didn’t say anything else you numskulls”, Warren sighed anew. Those other two were complete idiots, jokes of nature if one would ask him, with absolutely no brains at all. “So, do you want to listen to my plan now and believe me it is great, you’ll like it.”
Warren hesitated for a moment, letting the last few words of the speaker on the radio sink into his mind. That must’ve been the reason for the others suddenly having peed in their pants now if it wasn’t for the fact that they simply and basically were stupid morons.
“Because we are after all the villains around here, the Slayer’s arch nemesises”; Warren leaned slightly forward and wanted to explain them his new foolproof plan when another thought struck him.
“And would someone please turn off that crap now, unbelievable that someone actually listens to that shit. If you asked me, this guy just talks complete rubbish there, waste of radio time. He has absolutely not a clue what he’s talking about.”
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Ah, my children, trying to hide somewhere out there in the night, aren’t you? Thinking that no one will find or see you there? Within all of you there is evil, the seed that has been planted grows within you all, in each and every single one of you.
And it always are the flowers that are hidden deepest which will be in bloom their most beautiful way once their time has come.
Part Five - Silent Song (coming soon)