[Quiet sounds - wind scattered dead leaves that have been tracked into the hall, a kettle softly bubbling, the ticking of a clock and the humming of the stove. Giles enjoys the silence for a while before he speaks.]
Happy Halloween, everyone. Day late and, um, a dollar short, I know, but...we were all a bit preoccupied yesterday, weren't we?
...after all of that, though, I must say I still preferred this fiasco to last year's.
[A chair is pushed back. Footsteps can be heard as Giles starts to pace. Edna gives a soft squeak as he picks her up from the floor.]
For those of you who weren't here for Halloween last year? Count yourselves fortunate - not only were we stuck in truly ridiculous costumes, but by the end most of us were hallucinating and half mad. The Malnosso chose to alleviate the situation by stuffing us all in a tent where a maniac in a beak mask teleported about tearing out our feathers all night.
...shame the masks wouldn't burn as well as the costumes. Personally, I found setting that stupid outfit on fire to be remarkably therapeutic.
Do you know what Halloween was, back home? Halloween was supposed to be the night where the world didn't end and the various supernatural beings we had to hunt for night after night didn't show their faces to cause trouble. They all found it terribly tacky, you understand. To a real vampire - one that's survived longer than a month, I mean - plastic fangs are terribly gauche. Even after everything changed, human hopefuls were still something to be scorned.
...sad as I am to admit as much, I still agree with them. But I'd take tacky over horrifying any day.
[A pause, broken only by a soft "thump" as Edna wriggles out of his grasp and lands lightly on the floor. She stalks away, dignity quite bruised.]
How did you all celebrate Halloween back home, then? If you did, of course, I'm aware it's a rather...specific sort of holiday. For about half our years in Sunnydale, we spent it attempting to avert some disaster or another. Which I suppose just goes to show, tradition can sometimes go and hang.
[A chair can be heard scraping across the floor as Giles takes his seat again. His pencil makes rhythmic "tap, tap, tap"s against the paper.]
I need a boat moved. Or, um, I need help getting a boat moved. Not a very large one, but...well, too big for the transporters. I know it's probably a fairly staggering oversight, building it here, rather than the out by the beach, but [he sighs in mingled frustration and exhaustion] I suppose I never thought we'd get this far...
...still need to name the damn thing.
[Filtered away from Helios Sprensonne, Grell Sutcliffe, and Harth Fray - Unhackable]
How do you talk sense into someone utterly bound and determined to refuse to see it? Or, more appropriately, how do you remove the martyr from his martyrdom? Are any of you honestly still blaming yourselves for whatever you did while wearing one of those ridiculous masks? And if you managed to talk, how the hell did you manage it?
...I'm afraid to take my eyes off him like this and I'm not sure I have the eyes to spare.
[/Filtered]
[Locked to Grune - 75% unhackable]
[It's a courtesy filter, more than anything else, although a part of him is holding out hope for a pleasant surprise for people if this works out.] I, um, I think I have everything together. You can stop by whenever you want, and we can get to work.
[/Locked]
[Locked to Helios Sprensonne, Buffy Summers, Ginia Solana, and Link - Unhackable]
[A long silence, a long drawn out and thoughtful silence, before]
I'm sorry. F-For, for how I acted. With that mask the, um, the...two colored one. I think I've figured out what, wh-what it did to me, and I remember how I was and...
...I'm sorry.
[It's a talk he's had with Helios already, but...Giles wants his friends to hear his apologies without being shouted at in the process.]
[/Locked]
[With Helios and Ginia both left in rather poor states by the experiment, Giles can't really bring himself to go far from home or clinic. And, indeed, he'll spend a good part of the day hovering in the vicinity of those two buildings. However, an excuse to get away comes in the form of this strange manifestation of stress baking that had gripped him for most of the morning. Sorry, Grune, but he's already gotten a bit of a jump on the cakes. And the pies. Especially the pumpkin pies.
Most of it is left for Helios - it was his idea, after all - but Giles is going to take advantage of their own survival and the general exhaustion of the village to do something that is probably quite silly. Blame it on the exhaustion, because he does look exhausted, although he's abandoned the librarian clothes for something a little more his style and a little more current century.
Which is to say, he's going to set up a table in the plaza, set out a probably quite impressive array of baked goods...together with a portable kettle of hot tea...and settle in with a book. A small handwritten sign is taped to a space of clear table - "Please take some." If certain people do not stop by his table and take some damn sweets? He'll take the leftovers to them later in the evening. House 7 and the clinic, this means you.
...in the meantime, if you do stop by, you might also catch Giles dozing off in his chair. What? It's been an exhausting few days, and even his patch job on his injuries from Mithos didn't do a damn thing, in the end.]
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