Out of the Darkness
                       ===================

                        by Calle Dybedahl

The ranger hesitated with his keycard a handspan from the door's lock.
It was an old metal door, with a sign on it carrying the
single word "Storage".
  "Are you sure you want this, Entil'Zha?" he said. "There is nothing
in there but old junk... less interesting things that there was no
room for in the exhibition halls."
  The Minbari-Human woman in her red and blue dress smiled at him.
  "I am sure," she said. "Sometimes, one can learn more about
someone by seeing what they don't consider interesting than from
what they do."
  The ranger bowed to her. "As you wish, Entil'Zha," he said.
He brought the keycard the rest of the way to the reader and opened
the door for her.
  "Thank you," she said, still smiling. "If John should ask for me,
tell him that I'm doing research and will see him tonight."
  "Yes, Entil'Zha," the ranger said.
  She walked through the door, which closed behind her.


The storerooms were dimly lit and very dusty. Nothing much in them
had been touched for many a year, except for the occasional new
addition to the collections. She could tell which ones they were,
from the tracks in the dust leading up to them.
  It surprised her that the place wasn't better cleaned.
It was, after all, a part of Earthdome, the center of government
of the Earth Alliance. A place like this back on Minbar would've
been spotless. But humans weren't minbari. They might share souls,
but they certainly didn't share tastes or psychologies.
She'd learned that the hard way.
  In spite of what she'd told the ranger, the stored
things didn't tell her much, nor did she expect them to.
Almost everything was packed away in crates anyway, and thus invisible.
But the place was deserted, and after weeks in the constant noise
and movement of Earth Alliance politics, she needed that. She'd tried
to go for a walk outdoors, but her appearance was far too distinctive
and well known. Within minutes, she was again surrounded by people.
Not unpleasant or threatening people, no, they were all very nice
and almost awed by her presence, but they were *there*. They talked,
and smelled, and moved, and it just never stopped.
  So when she'd heard about the old museum stores she'd asked one of
the locally stationed rangers to take her to it, so she could have a look.
By herself. Alone.
  She brushed the dust off a crate and sat down on it, listening to
the silence. Well, almost silence. She could hear the soft noise
of the climate control system. But, on the whole, it was silent.
  "Excuse me?" a muffled voice said.
  Delenn jumped up and looked around.
  She couldn't see anyone, and she hadn't heard any steps.
That she was sure of, with the listening to silence and all.
  "Excuse me, person who I can't see, but do you know where Spike is?"
  The voice was coming from the crate she'd been sitting on.
  "I don't mind if you don't answer. Nobody's answered for a very long
time now. But I really have to find Spike."
  The crate was made out of grey plastic, and about two meters
by one by one. It seemed to be well sealed, and she could see any
obvious ventilation holes.
  "Hello?" she said. "Are you all right?"
  "I'm fine, thank you," the crate said. "Except I don't know
where Spike is. I may be broken. If I am, I need to find Willow.
I should go to Willow when I'm broken."
  Broken? Delenn's brow furrowed. The voice was speaking strangely,
but it might be some kind of human dialect she hadn't encountered before.
  "Would you like me to let you out?" she said.
  "Yes, please," the voice said. "It will be much easier to find
Spike if I'm not shut in a box."
  She bent down, undid the fastenings of the box and lifted the lid.
The insides were padded, almost like a coffin. The resemblance was
heightened by the fact that a beautiful blonde girl was lying in it.
  The girl sat up. "Hi!" she said, beaming a smile at Delenn.
"I'm Buffy. I don't know you."
  Delenn couldn't help smiling. "I'm Delenn," she said.
"Pleased to meet you."
  The girl climbed out of the crate. She was wearing a pair of
blue pants, a beige polo-necked sweater and a short bright red jacket.
On her feet were calf-high black boots with two-inch heels.
  "I'm pleased to meet you too. It's been a long time since I met anyone.
It's been a very long time since I met Spike."
  As far as Delenn could see, the girl looked entirely healthy
and normal, if a bit fixated on this "Spike". If she hadn't found
her where she did she wouldn't have looked twice at her.
  Well, all right, if she hadn't found her where she did and she
had been a lot less pretty.
  "This Spike, he is a friend of yours?"
  "Yes. I have sex with him. I like his cold and muscular body.
I like having sex."
  Delenn smiled again. The girl was charmingly direct.
"I like having sex, too," she said. "Although I have not had as much
opportunity to explore the erotic possibilities of the human body
as I would like. The Shadow war took all the energy I and John had,
and we've both been busy with the Alliance since it ended."
  The girl's face shone up. "We could have sex!" she said.
"Spike says that I can have sex with other girls, if he gets to join in,
or watch, or I tell him about it in intimate detail later."
  She hesitated for a moment, looking thoughtful.
  "I have a lot of things to tell Spike when I find him," she said.
  Delenn laughed. "Yes," she said. "We could do that.
I and Susan engaged in some... mutual exploration a few years back.
I liked it."
  "Good," Buffy said. Almost faster than Delenn could see,
she put her hand behind Delenn's neck. She pulled the half-minbari
to her as if she was weightless, and kissed her.
  At first, Delenn was too surprised to respond. The girl was *much*
stronger than she looked. Stronger, in fact, than anyone Delenn
had ever met, human, minbari or otherwise.
  Her lips where soft and human, though, and after a few moments
Delenn opened her mouth and let the girl's probing tongue in.
She tasted peculiar, somehow. Not like either John or Susan.
But then, she was hardly an expert on the range of human body chemistries.
She tried to stop analyzing and just enjoy the feeling.
  Buffy broke the kiss. "You are wearing a lot of clothes," she said.
"They are strange to me. I do not know how to take them off nicely.
If you don't know that either, I can rip them off. That would be fun."
  A momentary image of herself sneaking back to the presidential
suite trying to keep herself covered by holding the rags of her dress
around her flew through Delenn's mind.
  "I know how to take them off," she said. Dismissing her thoughts
of getting the girl to more civilized surroundings, she shrugged
out of her long, blue vest and started undoing the well-hidden
fastenings of her robe. Buffy looked on with interest.
  "Your clothes are pretty," she said.
  "Aren't you going to take your off?" Delenn asked. "I can't
explore your body very well if you keep them on."
  "Yes," Buffy said. "I should take them off."
  Quickly and efficiently, without the slightest hesitation, she stripped.
There was no shyness, no modest hiding of herself as she pulled
her panties down or took her bra off. Before Delenn had managed
to remove all of her underthings, Buffy stood naked before her.
  Delenn looked at her. She was slender, even more so than Delenn herself.
Her breasts were small and her hips narrow. There was surprisingly
little muscle, considering her strength.
  A little less hair and a bonecrest, and she could've been minbari.
  "You're beautiful," she said.
  "I know," Buffy said. "You are too. I want to touch you."
  Delenn laughed. "You are very direct," she said. "I like that."
  She reached out and touched the girl's chest, between her breasts.
It was just as warm and smooth as she expected.
  "You remind me of a friend I used to have, back on Minbar," she said.
  Buffy took her hand and brought it to her lips. She kissed her
fingers eagerly, then took them into her mouth and sucked at them.
Delenn felt the now-familiar but still strange tingling of excitement
in her body. Keeping the hand where it was, she stepped up
close to the girl, put her unoccupied arm around her and rested
that hand on a well-shaped buttock. If she'd been a little taller,
their nipples would've touched.
  Her fingers slipped out of Buffy's mouth. The lips that had surrounded
them stayed in touch, moving along the arm, over the shoulder
and further down. Delenn groaned out loud as the warm mouth covered
the sensitive nub of her breast.
  "Yes," she breathed. "Like that."
  She put her hands at the back of Buffy's head, pulled her closer.
A hand slid in between her legs, gently tracing her labia.
  She closed her eyes and just enjoyed the feeling.


Buffy got up from between Delenn's legs, where she'd been kneeling
for a time that Delenn felt was both much too long and much too short.
She was lying with her upper body on a crate, with her ass just at
the edge and her feet wide apart on the floor.
  "That was fun," Buffy said. "But now I really have to find Spike."
  Delenn sat up, her messy hair sticking to her sweaty body wherever
the two touched. She felt more satisfied and pleasantly exhausted
than she had done in a *long* time.
  "If you can wait until I get dressed, I'll help you," she said.
  "Yes, please," Buffy said. "I would like that. Finding Spike
on my own is taking very long."
  Delenn stood up, carefully to give her knees time to stop wobbling,
and reached for her underwear.
  "Well," she said. "We'd better get started then."


The room was dark, lit only by the glow from the surveillance screens.
A handful of people in grey uniforms sat in front of them, watching,
looking, waiting for something to happen. The air in the room was tense,
and the silence as nearly complete as a number of humans can manage.
Behind the watchers, two people stood. One was a slender, not very tall
young-looking woman with pitch-black shoulder-length hair, and one
a tall, muscular and blonde man. She was idly watching the screens,
he was reading from a clipboard with a little red lamp lighting it.
They were both dressed in black uniforms and black gloves,
and they both carried Psi Corps badges.
  _The leadership of the Interstellar Alliance is proving more difficult
to infiltrate than we predicted,_ the man thought to the woman.
_It seems to be due to a combination of President Sheridan's Vorlon
modifications and their deliberate use of rogue telepaths to block us._
  On one of the screens, two women walked down a corridor towards
the dome's residential area.
  _We are working on ways to get around the problems,_ he went on.
  _Who is that?_ she tought at him, sharply. He looked up from
his clipboard, followed her gaze to the screen with the women on it.
He frowned.
  _Surely you know Delenn...?_
  She looked towards him with disgust.
  _Of course I know Delenn! The *other* girl, who is *she*?_
  _I don't know,_ he thought. _I don't recognize her.
Do you want me to investigate, Director Rosenberg?_
  She looked back to the screen.
  _Yes,_ she thought. _Do that._