Giles' Scallywags.

[ILLYRIAN]

All characters are from the Buffy TVS are copyright protected. All ideas are mine luckily for Joss.

While Giles was in England he pursued the idea he had about secretly training any people who wanted to be included, who wanted to be involved to be ready if needed. They were to be evident in the last days if the battles were short. They were not there to fight the vampires and demons, instead they were they to fight and kill those who spoke in support of or who sided with the vampires and demons. And should a few demons get in the way, he wouldn't complain.

With Buffy's compliance no slayers were to be active Scallywags, she asked that her involvement be kept secret so no blame or retributions could be rightfully sent her way. Of those Giles knew at the Sunnydale he thought that only Xander was a possible too be invited. It was Gunn who was sought, he came recommended by Buffy via Willow, Gunn had what Giles sought, the knowledge of street fighting of living rough and he had seen first-hand what demons would do what they were capable of and how to beat them.
Using the contacts he had made in the watchers council and with his friendship to Miss Harkness he drew the plans that would be needed. He didn't want his people to work in secret he wanted them to be in positions that were known and respected.

After three months of pursuing the Scallywag idea twenty seven registered nurses were placed in positions of trust in fourteen hospitals spread about the country in separate areas separated as witches covens used to be; twelve miles apart. The country could be covered without to many in any area, should one group be detected no other could be linked to that group. More people were being found and trained, as soon as one was ready they'd get a visit from Miss Harkness and given the knowledge that would be needed for a profession of trust then when that was completed they would be posted to the area they were required in. Giles didn't know it but Buffy had sought Willow to tell her what Giles was doing. Buffy had concerns that one place to pass contact through was a weakness in the structure, Willow agreed, it was.

Giles was busy organizing who was where and how many could be placed in an area, he looked up to see Miss Harkness stood in front of him.
"I have two more for you, friends of a friend of a friend and they are both related. I can leave them here now if you agree. They are almost ready, but there is one thing I can now do which might be helpful. I can alter what they look like as neither are exactly pretty. What is the term men use? That is it, dogs," Miss Harkness looked at them, "Yes they do look like dogs. So where would you like them to be from and what would you like them to do?" asked Miss Harkness.

Giles looked at the map he had made. "Most of the areas are covered what would be good is people in the hotel industry, senior to begin with." He looked at the girls. "I would like to see a city in the middle of the country set up first, have them from France hyper intelligent. I know where I can place them tomorrow as the Personnel department as long as they fit those roles."
"Easy as," stated Miss Harkness. And when Giles looked at them he saw two beautiful girls.

"That is alright for him but what about us? Are we to be seen with a doddery old sod like him? Bang would go our respect, how about making the old man like Chris Hemsworth?
If either of us get seen about town it will help our reputation." Miss Harkness agreed. "What do you think Giles, would you like to look like him, act like him and even if he knows what you know should you be tortured you would not be able to disclose anything that is Giles?"
"To be young again, I'd like that," he said. "Okay then, simple," said Miss Harkness, "All you need do is look into the mirror."

Giles looked into the mirror and saw someone else, a fitter healthier stronger him, he was impressed, he looked at the new Personnel Officers. "What do you think?"
"I think that before we talk any more we should be ourselves, everyone agree?"
Giles looked into the mirror and watched him change, he sighed at the real him. He turned to face Miss Harkness, he was stunned those French Personnel Officers were not dogs any more, he faced Buffy and Willow.
Giles went to Miss Harkness he placed his hands on her shoulders. "That will be so helpful, thank you."

He went to Buffy put his hands on her shoulders and smiled to her. "Welcome aboard."
He looked at Willow. "I can guess where the notion of Chris Hemsworth came from, I must admit I would have thought Christine though sll,"
he smiled at both of them, "You Scallywags!"

More in a week or so.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

All characters are from the Buffy TVS are copyright protected. All ideas are mine luckily for Joss.

Giles’ realized that they needed to have some sort of acceptable code that they could be known as, various suggestions had been made before it was agreed to go for Monks on Avon. As that name could be developed for future use as a tourism organization, a company by that name would also provide a cover for people’s movement about the country. Willow began to start a website for a company called Monks on Avon.

A suggestion was given to Giles from a few members of the coven to allow a spectral beings organization to provide a roving information aspect for them as there were many groups of dead who wanted to help. Some were spoken of in legend some were completely unknowns but there was a lot of them. Some of them were only interested in protecting their local environment but even they could be of national or international benefit in the right situation.

The Monks on Avon was becoming known and accepted throughout the Scallywags system when Giles received initial reports of people assisting the rising evil. Anathea had contacted Willow to tell her that three monks killed near Tintagel by the then King of England’s Cavalry in the 1500’s. They had said of a group of devil worshippers who had gained ‘official’ recognition were active locally.

They met at what was known as Merlin’s Cave, nothing had been said of that place for years until during a storm one day, the monks observed that the entrance to the cave had been noticed to have produced an unusual amount of turmoil on the water’s surface, much more than the areas either side of the cave’s entrance amounting to suspicions it could be a hellmouth. As such the dead monks had kept a watch on the entrance and on the castle’s activities. Such was the location and design of castles that they often had a well for fresh water built within the castle’s walls.

Two Scallywags took advantage of the offer by the Monks on Avon’s website for a week’s holiday in the North Cornwall town of Wadebridge. The prize was to include accommodation and the week’s use of a hired car. The two Scallywags often visited Camelford as the people who were thought intrinsic members of the devil worshippers group said to be helping the vampires were the owners of a farm near the bridge at Slaughter.

A little used track over the hills was found from the castle to the farm. Four of the monks ghosts were asked to see if the farm was providing temporary accommodation to the vampires. Word was sent that the vampires were not the target; it was only those who helped the demonic kind that were targets.

Searching for ways to dispose of the farm owners it was discovered that they were both allergic to peanuts. They were found to be friends with a flamboyant couple who owned a bookshop in Launceston, the couple was given a large tin of Brazil nuts as part payment for an old book bought from them.

Casual mentions were made of towns or tourist destinations of places with odd names that would provoke memory of the farm. Sure enough the owners of the farm went there a few day later. Upon doing an inquiry about how the case was going Giles was told the owners of the farm were due to go to the bookshop couples house for a meal the following Sunday. As Giles was told, all was in hand and they were not expected to survive the visit.

Giles was puzzled by what he was told, he didn’t understand how a visit for a meal meant job done. Willow informed him that the nurses who had gone on the ‘holiday’ were from the special Allergy Control Unit at the hospital in Torbay. That Brazil nuts were very high in toxin. Also they were the only member of the nut family that would cause those who ate the nuts to be carriers of the toxin.

As such, the owners of the bookshop being flamboyant people were highly liable to kiss their friends welcome, it was that kiss that would kill the farms owners. Also the toxin wasn’t noticeable so the death couldn’t be traced to the nurses. The Scallywags would have their first victims.

Giles was impressed and a bit scared, he had taken the name Scallywags from that special secretive group of the Home Guard from WW2, people who would seek those who aided the invaders. It was expected they would shoot to kill any who helped the invaders. That is what Giles thought of his Scallywags, a shoot to kill group, but to discover they were so ingenious, in the methods of killing caused him concern, they were better than he could have hoped.


To be continued. The Scallywags visit a person’s scent.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

All characters are from the Buffy TVS are copyright protected. All ideas are mine luckily for Joss.

Several areas at the South West of England were becoming controlled by demons, the Scallywags had help but finding who was helping them but where they were was hard to find. A group of seekers were sent to the Torbay area Willow who had taken control of the group. All those in the group of seekers were very capable in their fields: telekinesis, telepathy, thought transference, mind control and mind reading. None of those people were witches nor did they get their gifts that way.

They were all encouraged to develop those abilities through a military program that had been held in a secretive development program since the end of world war two. The English development program was in association with the American’s following knowledge that had been found about the Russian response to the German advancements in psychic awareness and its military uses since nineteen forty, specifically used in spying.

Willow’s group had started to target the financial markets. It was found that big business in an area was being changed to allow infiltration by demonic influences. Giles had expected that the evil would take control by physically attacking humanity but what was happening was even sneakier than he had thought, though it made the Scallywag’s perfectly placed.
Almost by accident a tax inspector had been found to have changed his department.

The man was beginning to promote new growth in the money markets. It had been thought that he had found new money men and he was directing where their money should be. Initially it was thought he was providing new places to invest their money but that was quickly found to be wrong. That tax inspector was found to be investing large amounts of people’s money in the private sector businesses.

Those individual investors were then found to be from the same group and the big local businesses began to be controlled. That allowed workers from ‘unknown sources’ to be employed and without being noticed by the wider community the demons had begun to infiltrate. The Scallywag program was really needed though it wasn’t promoted. It was in the right place to be effective.

The first towns and cities to be put under the control of evil was being subjected to a greater degree of scrutiny by the Scallywags group led by Willow. Producers of electrical, gas and green power developed energy were targeted first, then waste disposal followed by all types of fuel. Then the manufacturing industries were targeted followed by the upper echelons of society were sought to be controlled before the evil showed its involvement.

It was discovered that the three areas targeted had used the same formula for control, also that those three areas were able to join and those they formed a right angled tri-angle on the topography that allowed a greater control of the towns in between. Following that pattern Willow’s group went to the next area they suspected would be targeted for control. And the pattern leaders were found ~ a tax inspector from the second town was located.

Various ways were considered about how he should be killed, many of those ways were highly noticeable, several had the others who would help the demons were to be told of the killing. But it was pointed out that it would be better to target them with-out them being made aware that they were being watched.

It was eventually agreed that a very secret manner of killing someone be used. Willow contacted Giles to find out if anyone had a working knowledge of how to kill people in a way that couldn’t be specified as a murderous act, but Giles replied that he didn’t know of anyone suitable. At the next meeting of Willow’s group that was said, Luther Grenville the mind reader said how it could be done.

The following weekend that tax inspector was followed as he took his two Alsatian’s for an early mornings walk on the beach near his house. It was noted what his movements were, when he allowed the dogs to roam free and more importantly to that where he could be ‘attacked’. The following two week-ends he was followed to see if his routine was altered; it wasn’t.

Willow had asked for the Scallywags who worked in the local hospital research laboratory to send her a syringe that had the required DNA scent altering drugs that would cause the tax inspectors personal smell to be altered. Three people were at the beach where the tax inspector had taken to walking his dogs. The people lay in wait, pretending to be beach lovers, they waited for him and his dogs to pass, they even spoke to him, a happy greeting, and played with his dogs.

When he returned he had let his dogs roam free, the three stood up and collected their belongings together, as the tax inspector walked adjacent to where they were they injected him then ran to get away from him. He knew he had been injected but he felt no effects, he had immediately thought it was a heroine overdose. But even after two minutes nothing was felt, he knew he had better be checked by a doctor, just to make sure.

He wanted to know what it was in that syringe so he called his dogs to return; they ran to him. He knelt to them rubbing the fur on their heads vigorously as he had a thousand times before. What he didn’t realise that the contents of the syringe had already done what was intended; his scent had been altered. He didn’t know it though, the human’s sense of smell was not that acute, but both his dogs did know, they saw who he was but his scent was new so he was a stranger.

A stranger who was vigorously rubbing their heads, to them that was an attack on them so they retaliated; they killed him.
Though an autopsy was held no reason was found, the dogs had ravaged the area where he had been injected so it wasn’t realised why the dogs turned on him.



Next time:
She had tasted what a tiny amount of vampire blood was like and had a massive
rush. Once she took too much, were the side effects true?

 

[ILLYRIAN]

All characters are from the Buffy TVS are copyright protected. All ideas are mine luckily for Joss.

Giles was called in by Willow as there was something about this death that defied all she knew from the knowledge she had gained from the times before. Making a list of what was known didn’t help, it was when a structured graph of the tax inspector’s work was identified that the reasons began to become apparent. As a tax inspector for the area he targeted new business and the one of the new businesses he targeted was new to the area though it wasn’t just for that area.

The tax inspector, Luther Grenville had asked questions that related to the benefits to the town or the area about the town. There was none, when he had found that he delved deeper and found that no actual service or product was being provided. At first Mr. Grenville thought of an organized criminal element so he contacted the police, they told him that certain unsavory elements were moving to the area but he found no evidence of an increased rate of crime. He did discover certain crimes stopped while other aspects increased.

The tax inspector had kept files of his attempts to find out what was. The files seemed to stop there, Giles suspected he had been killed because he was too close to what was really going on. Even without knowing what that was Giles and Willow became quite certain that he was murdered so they concentrated on what was evident. The two dogs he lived and by many accounts based on friends the dogs would want to be with him, they attacked and killed him without provocation.

As Willow was browsing through files of him she noticed discrepancies. During a series of tests done eighteen months prior it was noted that he gave off a high testosterone scent, it was what the dogs were attracted to. To coin a phrase he had great ‘animal magnetism’, it was that which made him good at his job; people wanted to be compliant to him and be friends with him. The autopsy made no reference to his body scent. Willow took the findings to Giles, he quickly sorted through the reports he had of the autopsy and found her findings relevant.

He made note of an injection in the minutes before Mr. Grenville’s death. “That could be it, if the injection altered his perceived scent the dogs would have seen him to be a stranger. That could help us, up until now I have had people watch for changes in big business. If we concentrate on criminal activity we could identify the moments that the evil moves into an area.” Willow saw that any willingness to steal from people would give the perpetrators of this new evil an easy foothold. And it would go unnoticed until the honest members of the community were targeted.

Giles sent the word to all Scallywags to watch for changes of the behavior of the criminal fraternity. During the days that followed Willow had many conversations with Gunn, he told her to ignore the evil side of what was. That any psychic activity was human in essence, while evil might have the ultimate control it was the humans who opened the door. Gunn wanted Willow to look in the direction of what should be focused on, to who promoted the control. Willow passed on what Gunn had said to Miss Harkness, saying that she wanted the coven to watch on the astral plains.

They found the fourth plain to be full of messages all going in one direction though on seeking where those messages came from four points of space were located. Knowing how to stop those messages on the plain was not something the coven had any experience in but they could pin point the actual location where the messages originated. To prepare an attack would be difficult, as Willow stated if the transgressors were witches they would be secretive by nature.

In consultation with the coven Willow found eight witches who were willing to move about, when a location was found in the wooded areas near Lutterworth in Leicestershire they went to where the messages were sent onto the fourth astral plain. Making a circle so close to what was they knew their messages would join and react with what was sent. As soon as they could begin to alter the messages of control they set about identifying who it was. It took three weeks to find seven of them of them; working on the theory a full coven was used to entrap seven of the coven would have a detrimental effect on the rest of them.

Part of a witch’s arsenal is the ability to create a glowing orb that the witch could pitch at the back of who they wanted to identify, the size of the orb was altered to be so small and give off so little light it would only be seen by them. That way they could follow and identify who it was, when a house was found the Scallywags could be sent in and the transgressors could be ended. It took several days but that coven was closed. The mobile witches then purified the area.

The second location proved to be very difficult as the messages were being sent by a solitary practitioner of the craft. That was until logic was applied to the task, it had been found that the area used was in the persons house, that he sent messages at different times of the day. Also was the fact his house was part of a large housing estate in Knebworth that had been added to over time. There was nowhere that could be used to send conflicting messages. Willow received a telephone message from one of the Scallywags that suggested such a simple solution to the problem that Willow was very embarrassed when she relayed the suggestion to Giles. Why not burn the house down when he isn’t at the house. All his tools of the craft would be lost to him.

The third and fourth covens added an air of entertainment on the outskirts of the village of Bishop’s Itchington near Southam in the bounds of Warwickshire separated by a two mile bridge over the Oxford canal and only three miles apart were the meeting circles of the coven. Being so close together they appeared as one coven, at one circle it was only on closer inspection by the mobile coven that both were found.

A canal barge was hired and taken to the bridge, that in itself gave considerable threats of personal threats until an understanding of how to steer the barge was gained. It had been found that the best way to alter the message sent was to send a constant message of a copy of a computer virus. The object of the virus was not parts of computers software, but people of criminal intent were targeted, when those other covens sent their messages of control the recipient was told to steal the money from organized crime. The resultant mayhem was that the crime syndicates imploded, demons that watched over those who sent messages took offence at what they thought was attacks on them.

Giles and a few Scallywags enabled the demons retributions to keep going, messages of disinformation were sent to them. The network that had taken so long to be put in place fell apart with a modicum of ease.

THE END