InsaneJournal

FIC: What the Ohio Board of Toursim Will Never Tell You--MCR/BTVS 15ish Gen
note: this is being posted by chapter sporadically through today and tomorrow. It's a matter of typing up the last 2? maybe 3 parts. Prince Insomnia has struck hard with that, my ability to get anything done on time around here further out the window than usual.


titleWhat the Ohio Board Of Tourism Will Never Tell You
author: lisa roquin
fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/My Chemical Romance
rating 15+
pairing/characters:Xander Harris, Gerard Way, My Chemical Romance + Brian, Matt & Worm, Faith, Andew Wells, Dawn Summers, Spike and numerous bits of OCs running around the background.
disclaimer: lies, fiction, untrue. completely and totally made up. I know no one, know nothing of their personal lives. I make no claims of knowing much of anything. BtVS Characters are Joss' toys. The miscellaneous baby Slayers, Cayla, Josh, Emma&her cats, Kumquats and anyone else non canon flitting through are mine.
summary: Fallout and ripples from the Little Apocalypse That Could doesn't seem to quit, and the W word didn't even come into this.
warning: insanity? language? egg-laying demons? psychic cats? Nothing all that far from a BtVS ep possibility other than slightly more insane
author notes: written for the livelongnmarry charity auction. Nell wanted Xander/Gerard, which this is...Xander&Gerard instead but hopefully you enjoy :)
thanks to Jiltanith for helping with reading over the first few chapters.
word count:


Chapter One-The Road to Cleveland


Alternative Press : What would you do if you could do anything in the world other than what you're doing now?

BB: Huh?
MW: Like what we'd be doing if the band hadn't made it?

AP: No, like your wildest dream if you weren't doing this?

RT: Teach music?
MW: Invent waterproof space heaters.
FI: (shoves Mikey a little) A**.
MW: What?
(laughter)

AP: Gerard, Bob, Frank? What would you do?

BB: Go to Ninja School in Jamaica.
FI: Be a hitman for the mob or maybe be Batman.
GW: Fight Vampires and monsters and save people.

~From the Cleveland Rocks Benefit Special Issue

~

“Two hours of fucking bullshit with that smarmy little jackass and that's what gets printed?” Frank rolled his eyes at the article.

Bob snorted and rolled his eyes as well. Two hours of a little sycophant asking them tedious questions answered a thousand times in countless interviews as well as about their own experience the last time they were in Cleveland five months before when the freak swarm of March tornados went through and did a massive amount of damage to the city though amazingly only four dozen lives lost. A truly miraculous number considering the apocalyptic level of destruction in some areas of the city. It was actually kind of as pointless as asking would they be afraid of playing in California if they'd been on stage during a massive 8 or 9 earthquake there. Shit happened. Freak storms happened in the Midwest at least a few times a year. The most newsworthy thing was that such a massive freak storm happened to hit a city dead on. If the storm had been in the middle of no where and killed some cows in Kansas or something no one would have heard about it.

The odds of them ever being caught in a storm like that again were slim, even as much as they toured. And if they did get caught in a storm like that again? Seriously, Dallas would be a more likely candidate for freak tornados and a hellish storm forming in about sixty seconds out of clear skies. The footage someone had caught of it was absolutely incredible, even if it had been shot at night. The lightning started first, streaking across clear skies then all hell broke loose with huge dark clouds and tornados. The thunder had been so loud it shook the ground almost like mini earthquakes.

Some crazy cat lady in freaking Cardiff, Wales had made a stir over the storm. A six-minute youtube video about the minions of hell trying to take over the city and earth and that Cleveland should be abandoned, plowed under and the ground salted and burned and blessed. The youtube vid had gotten enough viewings that she'd been picked up by the major news channels and even a couple talk shows with her prophecies about the end of the world starting in Cleveland. She'd gained a following of nutjobs who were on about vampires in Cleveland and a spate of dingbats petitioning the Bishop of the Diocese of Cleveland for exorcisms.

Her second youtube vid was about Aliens coming from a dimensional rift in Cardiff itself. The woman was absolutely freaking nuts but Hell invading earth from downtown Cleveland had caught on and didn't quite seem to be completely going away.

It was being brought back up with the benefit concert for rebuilding being held at the Q Arena with at last count forty-two bands playing over the space of three days. They were going to be playing the nine o'clock set the first night and there for all three days. A series of DVD releases with all proceeds going to Cleveland chapters of assorted charities was in the works as well.

“You're supposed to be deciding what you're donating your DVD to,” Brian glanced up from his laptop with an irritated glare. “What are you looking at?”

“The stupid Alternative Press interview you said we had to do,” Gerard snorted.

“I haven't seen that yet. What the hell did you say stupid?”

Mikey giggled.

“Give it here, Frank!” Brian demanded.

Frank threw the magazine at Brian.

“Oh for fuck's sake, Gerard!” Brian groaned.

“What?” Gerard said innocently. “Seemed like a good answer since he spent two hours basically trying to get us to admit we were permanently traumatized and moving into bomb shelters due to a freaking thunderstorm.”

Brian gave Gerard an unamused glare.

“Oh c'mon. Frank said he wanted to be a hitman for the mob,” Gerard snorted and rolled his eyes. “How much more playing to stereotypes can you get for an Italian guy from Jersey?”

“Or Batman. Batman would be cool too,” Frank grinned.

“Not as cool as waterproof space heaters. The bathroom in our apartment is fucking freezing in the winter,” Mikey said. His voice was flat and monotone as ever, only the light in his eyes told the tale he wasn't serious, or at least not completely serious.

“Ninja School in Jamaica would be fucking awesome,” Bob grinned. “Beaches and bikinis and ninja classes.”

“That would be kinda awesome,” Frank agreed. “Except for the part where Jamia'd probably castrate me.”

Ray giggled. “I hate those questions I can never think of anything good.”

Brian shook his head as the guys, with the help of James and Matt, started in working on helping Ray figure out good answers to the utterly stupid questions that got thrown at them.


~


“Is there an apocalypse this week? What's with this place?” Xander stood and stretched. His joints cracked with the stretch and his ears popped from the yawn that caught him unable to fight it off any longer. The airport was a freaking madhouse. It was the first week of August and it looked like the day before Thanksgiving or something as busy as the airport was.

“Cleveland Rocks Storm Benefit this weekend, Boy Toy,” Faith snorted.

“Oh yay, more of the Little Apocalypse That Could,” Xander muttered. The near miss in March had been as close as they ever came to the world nearly ending. Honestly, it ranked second only to the First and the demise of Sunnydale. The thing was, it was the apocalypse that should have never happened. No portents, not a single prophecy. Not even a change in behavior of the nasties that go bump in the night being more or less active out of the normal range of things. The Little Apocalypse That Could had actually started at the school. The Coven that worked with the Council in Cleveland had been resetting the wards. Two baby Slayers were supposedly watching some of the Coven members kids—one supposed sitter had been on the phone to the cute boy she saw at Sylvan where her parents insisted she go twice a week. The other had had her headphones on and working on Algebra homework. The kids were all right there playing, no big deal, right? Oh so wrong.

The big deal came in the form of a particularly bossy first grader, her scarily powerful warlock three year old brother and three other four and five year olds that had decided they were going to play magic and do like their mommies did. Miss Bossy got a hold of a ritual to open the Hellmouth, or part of a ritual. A book kicked under the couch from Apocalypse research that never got picked up provided part of the ritual, though most of it in too big of words—both Latin and English for Miss Bossy to quite pull off. So the ritual had gone sideways from the word go. Not to mention that the animals and baby needed as sacrifice to do the ritual properly were substituted with a stuffed cat, a stuffed frog, a Cabbage Patch doll and a Lamb Chop sock puppet. (And who knew exorcizing Lamb Chop was that dangerous.)

They had only made the Hellmouth hiccup. It was the Weather-Controlling ArchDemon that slipped out during the hiccup that had been the problem. The only demon that Xander had ever seen throw a fit to go back to hell. That fit nearly leveled part of Cleveland. The ArchDemon when it physically manifested was all of six foot tall and wanted his mommy. He also claimed to be six hundred years old, which they later figured out was about the equivalent of maybe three or four human years.

Needless to say the two Slayers were still in hot water, and quite possibly were going to be for the rest of their lives. All too possibly, they paid about as much attention patrolling as they did babysitting, which had been the reason they'd been babysitting instead of patrolling that night. Nor did either of them seem to think that they had any real responsibility in the tantrum of the Weather ArchDemon equivalent of a preschooler. Instead laying the loosed demon, and the destruction and fifty-one deaths at the feet of a precocious six and a half year old first grader playing pretend. One went so far as to blame the just turned three year old, not even two whole months past potty-trained little warlock for the whole thing.

Xander was surprised he wasn't still bruised from keeping Faith from strangling the two little twits. If ever there was proof of the randomness of the original Slayer spell and the reworking of it to rebalance the Slayer population after the activation of Potentials before Sunnydale went—it was those two.

“So what's the what with the Crazy Cat Lady of Cardiff?” Faith asked when they finally, finally, got to the car. The parking lot even more crazed than the airport itself if that was possible.

Xander groaned. “Emma Davies.”

“Huh?”

“That's Cat Lady's name. Emma Davies. And she's fricken loonier than Dru. A little less with the nursery rhymes, singing stars and homicidal tendencies, but still fricken loonier than Drusilla ever was. Her cats might be more coherent than Dru's singing stars but she's loonier,” Xander slumped back in the passenger seat and closed his eye. It was obvious that they were getting no where fast just getting out of the parking garage. He was pretty sure that the roads weren't going to be any better, especially not with his and Faith's combined pure shit luck. “She's got thirty-nine cats, she introduced me to all of them once she got past the fact I was part demon. She decided it wasn't my choice to be part demon. The cats tell her things. Lucinda is the cat that tells her about the Hellmouth of Cleveland. Irma is the cat that has been telling her about the dimensional rift in Cardiff.”

“Another hellmouth?”

“More like a tear in the time space continuum Willow figured. She's sending what's his butt. Nigel? Stuttering tweedy little guy from the Council Library that's worse than Wes was when he first came to town? He's the one going to check that out. Irma-Cat thinks the crackpot team they have there has it as under control as it can get though. Lucinda-Cat thinks the weak-minded kittens should be left for a tom to snap their necks or put in a sack and drowned.”

“Weak-minded kittens?”

“Erika and Katie I think.”

Faith snorted. “They need beat that's for sure.”

“You can't use them for demonstrations of the five basic torture groups no matter how much they might deserve it for being twits. Giles said so.” Xander snorted. Though Giles really had no more idea what to do with the two Slayers than any of the rest of them did. Not even seeing the destruction, and a quick B&E to show them some of the bodies at the morgue had made an iota of difference to the two who simply did not get it at all.

“Since when are you part demon?” Faith snorted. “FINALLY!” she snapped and pulled out of the parking space.

“Since the near miss of turning into the creature from the black lagoon when I was on the swim team, I think. It's only a little bit demon and water demon. Matilda-Cat is the one that said that. She's the cat that sees and senses demons.” Xander yawned. Funny really, since he was the one they decided should go visit the Crazy Cat Lady being boring normal non-superpowered, non-magical anything. Crazy Cat Lady decided he was part demon.

“The cats are telling her this?”

“Mmm, she's somewhere between the most powerful seer I've met, including the old Shaman in Africa that claimed to be a hundred and thirty, and paranoid delusional bordering on schizophrenic.”

“Yay,” Faith shook her head. “So the verdict?”

“Friend her youtube channel and her twitter and her blog which seems to be a daily if not hourly accounting of what her cats tell her.”

Faith stared at him incredulously. “You're serious?”

“Well, it's that or basically pull strings, legally abduct her and lock her up at the council headquarters for the rest of her life,” Xander said darkly.

Faith raised an eyebrow.

“A couple of the Legacy were pushing for that. The Old Council would have done that in a heartbeat if not just sent a wetworks team after her.”

Faith made a sound suspiciously like a growl. “The Legacy” were the dozen or so odd members of the Old Council. Most of them only a couple or so years older than Xander, Buffy and Willow, they'd been in colleges, universities or tucked away on remote archeology digs or in back rooms of dusty museums well out of the line of fire or notice when the First went around taking out the Old Council. They'd been mostly pencil-pushing grunts and lackeys. The ones the Old Council hadn't needed or hadn't wanted to bother with much but were from families that had been Watchers forever, families that were high up in the core of the organization. “Sometimes I think it's too bad the First missed them. They're a buncha pains in the ass,” Faith muttered.

“Yeah I know. But until they cross the line to demon-summoning evil rather than pompous annoying asshole, we're stuck with them.”

Faith snorted. “Hope you don't have to go, Boy Toy, this is going to take forever to get to the school.”

Xander yawned and reached for the seat adjustment lever. “That's fine. I've got to type up a Legacy-Idiot style report and get it emailed when we get there. Napping is very much of the good now. Keep the road rage to a minimum?”

Faith shook her head with a smile and turned the radio on, a station that actually played more music than babble and commercials with the volume on low. “Go for it, X.”

~


Cayla swallowed and looked around. Her grandfather was still outside standing next to the Winnebago the family was all piled in. Her grandmother and aunts were tussling with the little ones herding them through the bathroom. Cayla had been told to stand and not cause trouble. While she was useful, they didn't want her tainting the little ones so she was at least spared dealing with her younger cousins. They might be okay kids if they weren't creepy and brainwashed and just plain mean.

Her youngest uncle came over standing by her. Cayla glanced at Joshua warily. He was only nineteen, just four years older than herself. Joshua flicked his hand at the magazine rack. Cayla swallowed back the gasp as a magazine suddenly had pages flipping open. Her eyes darted around worriedly. Her grandmother, Aunt Anne, Aunt Mary and Aunt Leah were still busy with the combined little thirteen kids. Her grandfather and Aunt Anne and Aunt Leah's husbands still out with the two vans and the Winnebago. Her other three uncles, James, Peter and Mark were alternately leering at the two women behind the counter and eyeing the beer case. None of them had balls enough to risk the wrath of their father over a six pack though.

Cayla managed to give a twitch of her lips, a terrified haunted look more than any semblance of a reassuring smile. She glanced at the page of the magazine, instantly recognizing the photo of the men. They'd been one of her favorite groups before. She and her mom had gone to the concert in Cleveland in March. Cayla had been allowed to miss the day of school and they'd driven the six hours from their little town to the city and had a blast. It was on the drive home and the demon that had...had killed her mom and the state had shipped her off to her mother's terrifying family. The family her mother had ran away from at sixteen when her grandfather had picked out her mother's husband for her, the man Cayla presumed was her father, and now married to Aunt Anne.

She took a half step closer seeing the comment. Maybe...maybe...she'd never tried anything like that and her mom's spell books and things had all been burnt by her grandparents. But maybe. Maybe. Maybe he could have his wish, and in looking for a way to undo it someone would help her, and maybe Joshua, get the hell away from the family. It was worth a shot. Anything was worth a shot. While she'd been fed and no one had actually hurt her, her grandfather and the rest of them terrified the hell out of her. They were insane. Yeah, her mother's answer of her family being psychotic religious zealots they were better off without the one time Cayla had asked had been the truest thing ever said.

At least Grandfather John had decided she hadn't been tainted by her mother's witchcraft. And when Aunt Anne and Aunt Leah had thought to attempt to question that, Grandfather pointed out he hadn't been tainted by his mother's witchcraft, or his grandmother's. That was enough to make Cayla wonder if her great-grandmother and great-great grandmother had been like her mother and herself, and apparently like her Uncle Joshua. All her mother's supposed witchcraft and devil worshiping had only been looking for ways to control the power she had been born with, and she'd taught Cayla what she could as well. They'd pretty much learned together her and her mom.

Her grandmother nodded approvingly as she sat down in her spot in the Winnebago next to her Uncle Joshua and she picked up her Bible, holding it as she closed her eyes. The picture of serene, zealot-like meditation as her mind scrabbled to figure out how to pull of the crazy idea that had taken root.

chapter two