Coming of the Scooby Army

Ch 2 – The Bitter

Andrew limped beside Warren as the Trio Gang leader muttered darkly into the night. He kept looking behind them for any signs of Nutty-Xander, but they remained alone. For the moment anyway, he didn't exactly feel safe just because the murderous Buffy-friend wasn't on their tail… there were a lot of other things that could come barreling out of the darkness, including the vampire he'd built the sexbot for in the first place. It was still a mystery where the real Buffy was hanging out these days, and what Spike was doing helping out Xan, but he couldn't afford to speculate about that right now. His grandiose plans to impress the demonic underworld of Sunnydale had fallen epically flat.

"We'll need to hide out… away from Sunnydale," Warren was saying to himself. "A-and then, we'll need a new plan."

"Leave?! B-but what about my parents? What about money? Is my head still bleeding," Andrew complained as his fingers brushed against some stickiness on his forehead.

Warren gave him a look of exasperation. "Your parents?! You mean the ones that left for Japan for three weeks and only LEFT YOU A NOTE?!"

"W-well… th-they did leave a few bucks for groceries, too."

"They left you thirty-bucks, Andy! For three weeks!"

Andrew shrugged, "They just wanted to make me get a job."

"No, they just don't care!"

Andrew stopped with a flinch and Warren noted he looked really hurt. In fact, he might have crossed the line that time… Andy looked like he might start crying.

"Hey, I'm sorry," he rested a hand on his shoulder and gave a friendly squeeze. "I didn't mean that."

Andrew shrugged off his hand and started walking again, rubbing at his wounded head without a verbal response.

With a sigh of self-derision, a rarity in Warren's world, he jogged up to Andrew and this time threw an arm around the back of his neck, pulling him into a one-armed, rough and manly hug.

"I mean it, Andy. That didn't come out right… I'm just stressed out and angry that our brilliant plan didn't work out. Your parents are okay."

Andrew shrugged. "They do care!"

"Of course they do. I told you I didn't mean it… c'mon… forgive me?"

"Th-they just… haven't been right since Tucker went to prison for issuing those terrorist threats against the school. I mean, they think he's like a psycho now. A-and he's going to be out in only a few more years, well, I mean if he gets his parole. They're just really stressed out, but they do care."

"I know," Warren conceded. "But we can't hang out here. Buffy's playmates will be tracking us down soon, if they aren't already casting locator spells."

"It was those pink guys' fault! If they hadn't been so pig headed and refused to follow us to the house, we would have won," Andrew whined.

"I think it may have been a mistake to recruit vampires, too," Warren added. "I mean, we did sort of have to threaten them into attacking the 'Slayer' directly at her house. I'm sure they cut and ran as soon as they could, the cowardly bastards. I won't make that mistake again."

"Do you really think they can track us with a spell," Andy asked worriedly, peering off into the night above them, as if he'd see some sort of magic cloud following them.

"Probably. That's why we gotta get the hell out of this town. Like, now. I have some money left from our stash… it isn't much, but it'll get us to Nevada, anyway."

"What about Jonathon?"

Warren made a noise of derision, if not disgust. "Short Round? Listen, he was never really Trio material. I should have just had us be a duo in the first place."

His arm was still around Andrew's shoulders and he gave him another friendly hug. "What do you say? The Dynamically Evil Duo?"

"Yeah. Yeah, okay," Andy grinned, before looking worried again, "Am I still bleeding?"

"Jon, is that you," a woman's voice came from the kitchen as he entered the mostly darkened house.

"Yeah, mom," Jonathon Levinson replied as he joined her in the kitchen. She only had the light on that was above the range, casting deep shadows around the tiny room. In her hand was a glass of orange juice, but he didn't bother to wonder whether there was vodka in it also.

"It's a bit late, isn't it," she said with just a trace of a slur. She tried to focus her eyes on the range clock, but seemed to give up and took a sip of her 'juice'.

"We had someone call in… I had to stay to help close up," he said, glancing nervously away. It was a tell that he'd always had whenever he tried to deliberately lie. It made him sad that it had been months since his mother had bothered paying close enough attention to him to catch it.

"Oh. Well, I'm glad you're home. You okay? You look a bit… pale, or something."

"I'm… I'm fine. I-it was just a, uh, rough night at work."

He could see her look him over, wondering. The look that he'd seen for the last two years… 'How bad? Do I need to worry about him? Is he thinking about hurting himself again?'

It always left him feeling guilty. You bring a gun to school to blow your brains out ONE time, and you never hear the end of it.

It was just lucky that he'd only been able to get a hold of his dad's rifle. The struggle to get it at the right angle had given Buffy time enough to stop him from doing something fatally stupid. She'd saved him. He remembered how pretty she had looked when she'd smiled at him on receiving her 'Class Protector Award' and wondered why he'd been in such a rush to join Warren against her; Another stupid decision made by a stupid loser….

"Did Andrew call? Or, maybe Warren," he sighed and worried.

He wasn't nervous about Andy, at first. He could patch things up with his best friend, but Warren tended to hold a grudge. And after seeing how far he was willing to go at Buffy's tonight, he probably needed to be worried.

He had left his two 'partners' when things had turned south, especially after Warren had punched Dawn. He'd never seen a guy actually hit a girl before, not outside of the movies, anyway. It had shocked and disgusted him and that had quickly turned to a bit of fear when he'd seen the violence in Warren's eyes… he believed that their 'leader' really would have kicked Dawn while she lay on the ground and he couldn't believe that he'd been friends with someone who could do something like that and hadn't known.

Jonathon realized then that he'd only been playing at villainy, looking to score some easy money. He now thought Warren really might be one deep down. He wondered whether Andrew was still out there with him, and that was when he'd started worrying about him.

"Not that I know of," his mother had slurred. Her eyelids were looking droopy now, which meant that this must be her third (mostly) Vodka and (only a splash of) O.J.

Pathetic that I'd know that, he thought.

"But I was working at the laundromat tonight. You could ask your father, but I think he's in bed. It's late isn't it? You're coming in late," she mentioned again before taking a gulp of her drink.

And, this would be the point where she stops 'politely sipping' and starts chugging, he thought. I better get upstairs before she starts wanting to have another re-hash of whether I'm thinking about offing myself again.

Aloud he reminded her that he had 'worked late' again as he passed her to head upstairs to his lonely room. He didn't think he was going to get much sleep tonight, not with the worry over what he'd seen in Warren's eyes earlier and the utterly shocked look on Dawn's face while she was lying there on the ground.

I think Andrew and me really, really messed up this time.

"We'll hit my sister up to stay in her and her husband's cottage outside Lake Tahoe," Warren was saying. "Uh, you may need to sort of help her around their diner in exchange for some room and board…."

"Ugh. Why can't we just rent a motel room?"

"We're sort of almost tapped out, Andy. I mean, really close. Jon's stupid 'bionic boots' were really expensive… for all the good they did! I almost broke my damned neck."

"Yeah," Andy sighed, reaching up to rub his head again.

Warren grabbed at his wrist, "Stop picking at it. We don't have time to stop for bandages and stuff. Now, how the heck are we going to get out of here?"

"Do you think we should backtrack for the van?"

"Too dangerous. Plus, Jon's turned into such a whiny, little bitch-dwarf, he'd probably call the cops on us. We'll need to use a bit of magic and steal a car. Something not too flashy that we won't mind ditching as soon as we reach where we're going…," Warren sounded like he was thinking aloud, so Andrew stayed quiet about how risky that was. "And then, we'll need some sort of masking magic… maybe you could come up with a spell?"

"I have a few books at home, if we risk going back there," Andy shared. "Plus, I have fifty bucks in my sock drawer that I saved from my birthday - we can use it for gas."

"Okay, then. Looks like we got a plan… see? I knew just being a duo was gonna be way better than including Pipsqueak," he grinned. "Just you and me… on the open road!"

Andy grinned back, stars in his eyes.

End Ch 2