What Could Be Lurking In The Corner

[whole_bloody_business]

Something's killing the students. Again.

Cara didn't ask to be stationed right on top of the Hellmouth. She certainly didn't ask to put her extremely expensive education to use trying to convince a bunch of drooling American teenagers to pay attention to Latin verb conjugations. In fact, she'd strongly prefer to avoid demons, non-Slayer high school students, and other such unsavory creatures altogether. But, well, she's the one who decided to become a Watcher. She made her bed, she has to lie in it.

Of course, when she signed on, she didn't expect a missing Slayer.

The girl seems to have vanished off the face of the earth, which, of course, means demonic activity is skyrocketing. And, of course, Cara's the only one around with even the tiniest chance of keeping it in check. Which is why she's poking around in the boiler room during her lunch break instead of popping another aspirin and taking a nap on her desk.

Whoever this missing Slayer is, she'd better have a damn good explanation.

Comments

[cross_and_bow]

"They'd rather kill me themselves when I turn eighteen, huh?"

[whole_bloody_business]

"Well, they can't trust anyone else to do it properly," she says sarcastically.

[impetuous_force]

"I almost wonder if they value a high turnover rate for some reason," says Rune. "There are rumors that the last Slayer in my world was killed by a botched or interfered-with or even an according-to-plan-some-of-them-die Cruciamentum but I don't know if it's true."

[whole_bloody_business]

"Valuing a high turnover rate would explain...a lot of things, but I'm not sure why they would," Cara muses.

[cross_and_bow]

"Younger Slayers are easier to control. Keeps the demon population guessing about where the Slayer may during any given year be based," suggests Destiny.

[whole_bloody_business]

"True. They'd have to train new ones more frequently, but it's not as if they're losing money or irreplaceable resources by doing that, and if the Slayer's value is primarily based on reputation and not actual Slaying, a less-experienced Slayer isn't significantly less valuable than any other," she says. "Fuck."

[cross_and_bow]

"Okay, look, what valuable things would actually be lost if the Watcher's Council disappeared?"

[whole_bloody_business]

"Resources. International coordination. Institutional power," she says automatically. "Fuck, I'm angry enough that I almost don't care."

[cross_and_bow]

"Can we potentially replace those things? Even partially."

[whole_bloody_business]

"The first two, yes, if we could get enough people on our side. The third would take longer." She rubs her temple. "I sense another project. And I wholeheartedly approve. But it'll take a lot of work."

[impetuous_force]

"What do you mean by institutional power? Do these people, have, what, politicians and stuff who owe them favors?"

[whole_bloody_business]

"'Reputation' might've been a better way to describe it. They're an old and well-known institution, so they have a lot of prestige among people who are in the know about supernatural phenomena, and people are more likely to listen to them. I wouldn't be surprised if they had various politicians who owed them favors, too, but that's not really my area, so they wouldn't have told me."

[cross_and_bow]

"What's the internal structure like, anyway? Who is it who wouldn't have told you things? You're a Watcher too."

[whole_bloody_business]

"We're all Watchers, but we all have different specialties, and some people have more overlap in the tasks they do than others. I know demonology, so I know exactly which books we have in the library and which experts we have on call, but they don't let me anywhere near PR, so I don't know exactly who we contact when we need to cover up something illegal. There's also a sort of unofficial hierarchy that I'm near the bottom of. I'm not from a legacy family and I had no friends on the Council to vouch for me, so I had to fight for my spot, and since joining I've started a lot of fights about unethical policies. So if there are secrets that some Watchers know and others don't, I'm probably one of the ones that doesn't know."

[cross_and_bow]

"What's the ratio of probably useful to partially sane to get-out-of-my-steering-committee that they've got going on?"

[whole_bloody_business]

"About 20-30-50, I'd guess. The twenty includes the people who take my side when I start arguments and the people who agree with me but don't publicly take my side for various reasons, the thirty includes the people who just agree with whoever's in charge and the people who disagree with me but are reasonable enough to be persuaded."

[cross_and_bow]

"Not as bad as it could be. Of course, schisming the organization could have problematic knock-on effects if the big chunk doesn't want to disband and go home."

[whole_bloody_business]

"Right. The problem is that that chunk is full of people who are very attached to the power they have and very set in their ways, and the chunk of useful people includes a lot of people who aren't keen on confrontation and are easily intimidated by the hostile chunk. I don't think the hostile chunk disbanding is a likely prospect."

[cross_and_bow]

"And they're oriented around having power over the office I hold and their suspected favorite method of having it held by someone they like better involves no diplomacy and lots of premature death. Caution is the order of the day, please."

[whole_bloody_business]

"Strongly agreed. Let's avoid premature death."

[impetuous_force]

"Assuming killing them's off the table, the endgame has to look like 'they acknowledge that they should go home and drink tea' or 'they are pried off their efficacious powers so that we can literally ignore everything they do'. The first one's sounding unlikely, so what are their efficacious powers? Magic, some money, a network that isn't all Council members, information for distribution or withholding, am I missing anything?"

[whole_bloody_business]

"Let's keep killing them off the table, shall we? Other than that, they have a small special operations team that they use to track down and rein in rogue Slayers. The members are reportedly quite good at what they do. I doubt they're likely to use magic as anything other than a last resort. Other than that, I can't think of anything."

[cross_and_bow]

"How often does 'rein in' mean 'kill', and if it ever doesn't, what else does it mean sometimes?"

[whole_bloody_business]

"I've been told it generally means 'kidnap and rehabilitate', but at this point I wouldn't be surprised if it meant 'kill' more often than they let on. As to what 'rehabilitate' entails, it varies based on the Slayer, but they'll use whatever they need to as leverage."

[cross_and_bow]

"...Oh, also, about that thing where they want to drug me and shut me up with a vampire. What do those drugs do to people who aren't the Slayer, if you know?"