Sunnydale is like that...

It was a strange evening. I had an odd feeling that something followed me through the streets, in the shadows. (Could anything stupid enough to do that be dangerous?)

I cast the mojo anyway. That was likely to tell me where the follower was and probably what it was. If it was tense or angry enough it might have ceased to be a problem, too. Nothing started singing so I hyped up the magic. Then I heard - well, I'd have to call it a voice because rusty hinges don't make words. It was singing about hundreds of bottles of beer on a wall and the feeling accompanying the "song" was utter boredom.

When I got to the bar it'd been trashed - not for the first time, it's a human neighborhood. Willy, the barman, told me that his database - what he called his little black book, has been stolen and that it contained some of my contact details. (The trouble is, I'd kind of exchanged invocations with a Vengeance demon who hangs out there, dating Willy, and I don't know what's in that book.)

What was left of the bar was buzzing with gossip. Yuffie is missing. (When I first met that demon - it calls itself a Pixie - Yuffie was singing "Like a Virgin" to the Karoake, and seemed to be a very small female. Not long afterward the little Pixie started dressing male and dating the female bouncer, a Slayer called Joan!

The story was that both Willy and Joan met their mates because someone put a love-spell in the dishwasher, and they fell for the next people they saw. I wasn't in the bar that evening, and sometimes I wonder....

I've never known what to make of the Slayer aspect - she's an attractive, happy girl but with a - I can only say a simplified mind. The amnesia was supposed to be from dimension-hopping but that kind of memory loss is usually trauma. She's friendly and it's made things much easier for me. But my magic's dangerous - and she'll probably change completely if she gets her memories back.)

I was just leaving when someone came in and said that the police had found a tiny hand pinned to a wall, with an army knife. Nobody knew any more than that but most people in the bar thought it must be Yuffie's.

There are a lot of puzzling people in Sunnydale - I keep my distance.

It's actually working! (I think)

Well, I finally got the computer-charms that were liberated from the Initiative base installed onto the computer. They crashed the whole thing! Maybe the soldier-boys booby-trapped them? (I'm told I'll have to do some reinstalling too, can't imagine how that will work out. Machines are not my skill.) Anyway, if Live-Journal doesn't eat this entry I guess I finally started.

I just hope the Crew are still speaking to me, because I didn't get into whatever they were planning with Cole and Phoebe. Makes sense not to take on The Source anyway, but I hope they'll understand, we've all got our limits and we've all got our rules -

In all the eons this world has revolved,
Justice Demons stayed uninvolved,
I can stay and watch,
I can go from here,
but they ought to know,
I can't interfere.

I can influence the clients' voices,
but they sing like they act,
of their own free choices.
They can choose to cower.
They can take a stand.
If they're drawn to fire
I won't lift a hand.
In all the eons
this world has revolved,
Justice Demons stayed uninvolved.

(But I'm going to have to recheck with that Wiccan about how to work the other charm before writing much more!)