slayers_desire | trying to make the pieces fit ((Buffyverse plot))

Clark's thoughts linger on Jonathan a little, at first. It's always hard to leave the baby behind, even when he's under the watchful eye of his Grandma Martha, but there's no way they can bring little Jonathan here until the new Seed has been created, at the very least.

He supposes that's all the more reason to solve this problem as fast as possible, and bring this world back to being a good place to live.

In any case... Jon is safe, and there's a meeting at hand. So Clark puts his fatherly concern aside for now, waiting patiently until they return home.

Victor is basically covering up the fact that she's nervous. She feels like she's going into surgery with a blindfold over her eyes and oven mitts on her hands. Especially since April is on this world now, with them, and therefore vulnerable. She's nose deep in a scroll she's read through seven times already, scouring for some new bit of information.

Right now, Ed feels a bit out of place. While he's been getting steadily more used to the supernatural world, he's still effectively a newbie, and he knows next to nothing about magic, or about this world's plight. He's not sure whether he'll even be able to help, beyond pulling his usual bodyguard duties. (You stick a scientist in a situation like this one, and he's bound to get just a little uncomfortable.)

Of course, it doesn't help that this is his first time meeting most of the people here. Clark and April are the only ones present that he actually knows; as such, he's uncertain of the others, and it shows in his expression, a small, wary scowl on his face as he reads through a book resting on his right thigh. He's perched on a table near April, a six-pack of Coke—one can separated from the rest, open, and about halfway empty—sitting on his left.

Ultimately, it doesn't especially matter if he thinks he won't be of help; April wants him here, and he knows that she has a good reason for asking him along, even if he's not sure what that reason is. He's her guardian, her sword and her shield, and when April calls, he comes, without question or hesitation.

April is blessed. All three of them will protect her and keep her safe. She couldn't ask for a better husband, or better friends.

Wesley coughed and stood up. "Well I wanted to thank you all for coming here to help us. Ever since the Seed of Wonder was destroyed, the creative energy of humans have disappeared. And the Zombies... the undead vampires... are becoming more and more dangerous."

"We need to create a new Seed of Wonder."

"We thought we could trust Illyria... but..." Wes sighed. "We can't."

"Is anything she told you about this true, or was it all leading to a trap?" Clark asks. He knows they can't trust her, but maybe there's something they can use.

Victor reaches up and massages her forehead, breathing out in a slow stream of air. She flips open the notebook she's been using to translate the older texts, though there isn't anything in there that she hasn't memorized by now. A jumble of blue, red, black, and green ink, each corresponding to a different level.

She's been working on this case so long that the word 'zombie' doesn't make her heart jump a foot up the way it used to, so long that she doesn't have that instinctive fight-or-flight feeling deep in her gut.

The cane she's using today is made of wood so old it's grey, with long, deep, vertical cracks in it. It's hung over the back of her chair.

"April is the Key, that much is obvious from prophecy and etymology. But I don't think Illyria's capacity for telling direct lies is very advanced. We have to remember that Illyria is used to walking in and getting what it wants simply by existing, not by telling verbal lies."

For once in his life, Ed's actually kinda lost. He shakes his head a bit, raises his hands (both covered in white cotton gloves, as per usual when he's out in the field) and says, tone of voice apologetic, "Hold up, guys. I realize I'm the new guy on the block here, but I'm not as caught up on everything that's going on here as I'd like to be. Mind giving me the Cliff Notes?" He's been trying to find out some of what he's missed by reading through the books, but it's hard to figure out what's relevant and what isn't. "I know who Illyria is, but I have no idea what she told you, and I don't know what's in this prophecy you're talking about."

"Many people are aware of the story of Buffy and the Scoobies. They fought in Sunnydale. And Angel and his allies, most of them in this room, fought in LA." April started at one of the beginnings.

"We took down Wolfram and Hart in LA. Many of us lost our lives." Wes added.

"A few years ago... Buffy and Angel were corrupted by Twilight. A Demon looking for access to this world. Twilight wanted to be created and given life. The resulting action was that Buffy destroyed the Seed of Wonder. And this world has been in disruption and chaos ever since."

"Illyria attempted to claim we needed Starlight, which she could get... but she wanted to know who was the Key. She wanted April." Spike growled.

"So you think we don't need Starlight after all?"

She shakes her head, stretches her legs out (pop, pop, pop go her knees). "I wouldn't be so sure of that. I'd keep that on the table, anyway. The translation isn't easy; we really could use an Obscenely Ancient Language to English dictionary."

"Anyway, uh--" You. Blonde boy. "We're trying to put a puzzle back together. Metaphysically. The world's biggest lock. April's the Key."

Ed takes mental notes as the others bring him up to speed, and also makes sure to remind himself never to piss off Spike. "Starlight... similar kind of name to the demon who corrupted Buffy and Angel," he muses, as much to himself as to the others. "Any connection?" he asks the group.

He arches an eyebrow at Victor when she seems to blank on his name, then helpfully informs her, "My name's Ed, in case you were wondering." Apparently no-one introduced him to the others. "Puzzles I can do," he continues. "Metaphysics... isn't really my thing, though. I'm a scientist, and pretty new to the supernatural world, so I don't know that much about the subject. But if I can help put the pieces together in any way, I definitely will. So let's brainstorm."

"I think the Starlight was just more of a... temptation." Wes adds his opinion. "Illyria was going to trade the Starlight to Victor, for knowledge on who the Key was."

"As the Key, April has a connection to the Mother. Just like her mother before her..." Spike gets nostaligic thinking of Drusilla.

"The thing is... we all know that I am the key... but we don't know what I am suppossed to do." April was hoping that her three brainy companions would be able to connect the dots for her.

"Let's put all the facts on the table," Clark suggests. "Everything we know about the Seed. What it does, how it was destroyed, what we know about creating another so far." A fresh set of ears might make connections where no one has seen them yet, and so far they've been doing it piece by piece.

"Nice to meet you, Ed. I'm Victor. I don't come from a world with the supernatural, either, so we can be partners in that respect." She has the grace to look sheepishly at April. What can she say, she's easily plied with offers of new shiny things to study. Especially starlight. To be able to hold that in your hand... she's still a little bummed out that she couldn't run tests on it. At least she didn't uphold her end of the bargain. She didn't give Illyria any information on the Key, any indication that she knew it was April.

She looks to Wesley to be the one to summarize what they know so far. It'll sound better coming from him, what with his Britishness and charm and ability to, you know, gesture to books in ways that, even after all the physical therapy, she still kind of struggles with.

Ed smiles at Victor and offers her his right hand. "April's mentioned you once or twice. Nice to finally meet you too. My reality has plenty of supernatural in it, actually, but... I'm not from Earth, and my homeworld didn't have anything in the way of stuff we considered supernatural, so, once I got stuck on Earth... kinda got tossed into the deep end."

Ed would be the fresh set of ears, then, and fortunately, those ears come with an IQ that's off the charts—though Ed's intelligence has always been mitigated by his fiery personality. Nonetheless, 'brainy' is definitely a very appropriate description for their resident Alchemist.

He slaps the book on his lap shut and sets it aside. Then he reaches into his knee-length red coat and pulls out his journal of Alchemy notes and his favorite fountain pen, setting them beside the Coke cans in case he needs them. "Sounds good to me," he tells Clark. "Lay it on me, guys; let's see what we can see."

"According to Legend... the Mother birthed several Seeds. Each of those Seeds created a different universe. Our universe was created using the Seed of Wonder."

Wes drank a glass of scotch as he spoke. "When Twilight wanted to be created, the goal was to possess the Seed of Wonder. Buffy broke the spell just in time... and destroyed the Seed of Wonder with the Slayer Scythe."

"The only clue we have to creating a new Seed is that the key will be the one who gives us hope again."

"Hope?" If not for the year of trying to learn how to defeat Darkseid, that word wouldn't have caught Clark's attention in quite the same way. But they spent a year learning how to use hope to save the world, and now, it looks like they have need for that again.

She has a firm handshake back, a ready smile for Ed. "I'd love to hear more about it sometime."

Victor and Ed have a similarity... the grey matter between her ears is as impressive as her body is broken down. Probably more so.

"That's tough, because that could even mean that just the simple act of being here in this group is enough for hope, in the loose conceptual sense."

And Ed's hand is going to feel unusually hard, even beneath the cotton glove. He, too, has a firm handshake; one could almost describe it as... well, steely, in which case, they would literally be correct. His smile broadens, and he answers, "I might be up for a chat later, after we're finished fixing things here."

Ed's a little bit curious about the other Seeds, but knows they're not relevant to the matter at hand, so he doesn't ask. It'll be a discussion for another time, perhaps. Meanwhile, he sips at his can of Coke, and takes in the rest of what Wesley's telling them, formulating questions, trying to pick out patterns. He's making no assumptions; the fewer of those, the better. The questions he has a number of, but he's going to limit himself to posing one at a time.

"Hope..." Ed says quietly, closing his eyes for a moment. Then he opens them again and looks over to April. "April's already given me reason to hope again. That's part of why I'm here." The other part is, of course, a desire to help others in need of it—a desire and, to his mind, a duty to help others.

Something else immediately leaps to Ed's mind that he feels should be elaborated on, and he turns to look at Wes. "Wesley," he asks, "could you go into more detail about how, exactly, Buffy destroyed the Seed?" He's hoping that, if he can get some insight into her methodology, it might provide some clues as to what kind of process they might use to create the new Seed.

"Both Buffy and Angel were led to the Seed of Wonder by Twilight." Wes poured himself another scotch. "While Buffy and Angel, under the control of Twilight, battled in the ruins of the church where the seed was held, Giles brought Buffy the Slayer Scythe. The Scythe began to glow red as its power grew in the presence of the Seed. After the Twilight-controlled Angel killed Giles, Buffy, in a fit of devastation, used the scythe to destroy the seed."

"The destruction of the Seed immediately disempowered witches throughout the world, while active spells were severely weakened or simply broken. Creatures with inherent powers, such as vampires and Slayers, retained them. However, no more Slayers could be called, and no more vampire demons could enter this dimension, resulting in all new sirings becoming zompires."

"The destruction of the Seed also has removed people's hope." Lorne shivered when he spoke. "No songs have been written. No movies. No books. Humanity has given up on their dreams..."

"It almost sounds like the corruption of the Darkness," Clark says slowly, considering the effects on the people.

She stands with a few more distressing crackles from her joints, wrapping her hand around her cane. She paces back and forth, thumping the ground as she walks. And when she talks, it's with the quietness of someone who's not used to being unsure.

"Could it be as easy as... doing a spell? Or writing a song, or making a piece of artwork? Could that trigger some sort of chain reaction, through the simple act of creation? Because it's paradoxical, creating a Seed in a world that's lost the act of making. Even down to vampires, unable to make more of themselves. It's abstract, I know, but...."

Ed is mostly quiet while he mentally plays with the new puzzle pieces he's been handed, trying to make them fit; he doesn't want to voice any ideas out loud unless he's reasonably certain that they're logically sound. He considers Victor's hypothesis, deciding that there's a reasonable chance she's on to something; he leaves it as a sort of partially assembled group of pieces kept off to the side, but still within view. Clark has also made an interesting observation, and he adds it to his mental notes, not yet certain of whether it's an actual 'piece' or not.

He's fiddling around with several of those pieces at the moment: first, Spike's earlier statement about April's connection to the Mother, and his knowledge of her potent psychic abilities. Second, Lorne's remark about the destruction of the Seed taking hope away from humanity. Third, and most importantly, the only clue they had at the start: 'The Key will be the one to give us hope again.' And that part, at least, makes perfect sense to him—April gave Ed the one, blazing bonfire of hope in his heart that most motivates him to continue to act, to help people, to do something and leave his mark on the world, and Ed has no doubt whatsoever that she will be able to return that same kind of hope to humanity.

Huh... maybe he's on to something there...

She gave you Hope, says a quiet little voice in the back of his mind. Maybe she can give humanity its Hope back, too; maybe that's what she needs to do. Except that little voice doesn't sound like his usual internal monologue... but more like that of a ten-year-old boy... and a familiar ten-year-old at that.

The pieces suddenly seem to click into place, and the realization dawns on his face a moment later; his mind races, eyes darting back and forth a little as he runs the hypothesis repeatedly through his brain, checking and double-checking his logic. The more he does, the more he becomes certain of it, and as he becomes more certain, he slowly starts grinning and laughing quietly, the laugh eventually bursting forth as a full-blown cackle. "HA! EUREKA!" he shouts, leaping to his feet in triumph. "I think I've got it!" he exclaims to the others. "Or, part of it, at the very least!"

April squeezed Clark's hand when he talked about the corruption of the Darkness. Hopefully they would be able to help this world, just like they helped his.

Lorne gave Victor a tired smile when she talked about writing a song, or making a piece of artwork. The music man enjoyed her visits... it reminded him that there were worlds out there that still had music.

He jumped a little at Ed's Eureka. Wes, who finished his second glass of scotch, just looked up amused, "Well share it with the class."

Clark's slightly skeptical that Ed would get it right off the bat only five minutes after he's first heard the details, but he's an open-minded sort of guy. He nods at Wes's statement, looking toward Ed.

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