Xander dragged himself to the base for the ice cream trucks, feeling like he'd really rather stay home snuggled up with Anya. Things in Sunnydale were getting weirder, and that was always a bad thing. There were those weird groups that he'd seen occasionally, looking like clusters of soldiers lurking in the old industrial area. Lots of vamps and demons hung out there. He wasn't sure if it would be good or bad if the soldiers were aware of that, but his gut was certain that things would get ugly.

There were several of the other guys just standing outside of the garage, looking nervous. Randy was puffing on a cigarette, pacing in little circles.

"What's going on? Shouldn't we be opening up the garage, starting our routes?" Xander asked, worry already setting in. This wasn't right, wasn't part of the routine. Unexpected changes like this were generally bad in Sunnydale.

"Garage is still locked." Randy snapped, and sucked on his cigarette, red rimmed eyes flickering from Xander to the garage to the dark door that led to the office. "Nobody's answering the bell either."

"We tried pounding on it and shouting some too. Then we tried the garage access door, and it was locked." Chipped in Steve. "I think I strained something."

"Okay, normally, Jack's got everything ready to go before any of us ever get here. What's the earliest that anybody got here, and how long does that make it that things have been locked when they shouldn't be?" Xander spoke, trying to take charge because someone needed to.

"Some days I get here at six. He's always got things ready to go by then. The door's never been… This has never happened before. There's always been a note or something." Steve muttered, staring at the door.

"Six… That's before sunrise, isn't it?" Xander was getting a bad feeling. Were garages counted as public domain, the sort of places that didn't require an invitation for vamps?

"Maybe not in the summer, but it is now." Randy agreed.

"Told him those early hours weren't healthy," Grumbled Frank, his hat pulled low over his face. "Hope he's still around to believe me."

Xander looked at Frank, wondering if he'd actually found someone else that had a clue about the dangers of Sunnydale. Frank hadn't ever come out and said anything, but… who would? If you didn't already know, it would sound crazy. Half the time, it sounded crazy even though he did know. Or maybe Frank just didn't like mornings. "Has anybody called the police?"

"Yeah, they're supposed to be here pretty soon now." Steve tapped at his pocket, where there was the faint bulge of a cell phone. "Not that I think they'll do much good. I think… whatever happened is over and done with."

For once, the police lived up to their word and duty, arriving a few minutes after Xander. The pair of officers got out of the car, and one began looking carefully at the garage and office door while the other collected statements. Granted, most of them were variations of 'I got here, and the door was locked, which isn't normal. Nobody answered, and things feel wrong.'

Xander watched as the first officer spoke into a little radio, and then carefully fussed with the locks on the smaller door beside the garage. Glancing back, he called, "The office appears to be normal, but if there's a problem, we'll need to take a closer look. I'm going to open the door to the garage."

The second officer waved the go-ahead, and everybody watched. Steve shifted his weight from foot to foot. "If we're lucky, I'm going to get yelled at for causing a big fuss over nothing."

The door cracked open, and Frank winced. "Oh no…"

Xander frowned, wondering what Frank could possibly mean. The door had been locked, and it was dark inside. Not good, but Frank sounded a lot more upset than just the fact that normal routines had been broken. Unless maybe Frank knew about the not-so normal because he wasn't quite normal himself.

The officer peered into the darkness, and shook his head. There was a short delay as he went to the car to grab a heavy looking flashlight, and then he went to the door and shone the light inside. That lasted about fifteen seconds before he backed away, swearing as he turned pale.

"And the Hellmouth strikes again." Xander muttered. "I knew I should have stayed in bed."

The officer straightened up, glancing at the door again before stepping further away and looking at them. "There's been… That's a crime scene now, you'll all have to go home. Your trucks are… ahh… evidence. Your feelings that something was wrong were, in this case, dead right."

"When you say 'dead right', is that literal?" Randy asked.

There was a grim silence, and the officer looked back at the door. "It's a bit too early to figure out for certain, but someone or something has been… left in pieces spread over a large portion of the garage and the tucks. There's the possibility that it might be your employer's remains."

"Oh God…" Steve looked like he was going to be sick.

"Go ahead and go home, guys. We've got your names if we have any more questions." The officer said, his expression sympathetic.

Xander shivered, pulling his jacket a bit closer as he started back towards his car. Pieces… About the only thing that could possibly be good about that was that it meant he wouldn't be having to stake his boss. The engine rattled, and refused to start.

For a moment, he closed his eyes as he rested his head against the steering wheel. This wasn't a place to stay. He was probably out of work. Trying again, he tapped his hand on the dash as the engine made a few grinding noises before sputtering to reluctant life. As he pulled away, he caught sight of a jeep pulling up, with a pair of army guys inside. One of them got out and started talking to the police officers.

That raised alarms in Xander's Hellmouth trained guts as well. Something was very wrong here. He'd best get to the Magic Box so they could try to figure out what was going on before it bit them all in the backside.

end part 34.

Tara remained sitting at the table for a while, letting her mind drift idly. She wasn't a demon, didn't have demon blood from her mother. Her father had lied to her for all those years. She was human. Well, a mutant, but mutants were still human, just with a few extra options. Sort of like a special sort of car to buy…

Her mind flickered, and she remembered her mother, looking tired and sort of faded as they walked to visit her Grandmother, memories of helping in the garden. She remembered her grandmother baking those little delicious cookies, and talking about far away places that she'd seen. Remembered Gran explaining that with the Seeing, all she had to do was send her mind and she could see far away places as well.

Shivering, she remembered the momentary glimpse that she'd had of a row of cells, with creatures imprisoned inside. Wirth a little, well, the closest that she could explain it was halfway between a mental shiver and a mental hiccup, her inner eye was there again, looking in the long hallway of concrete cells. There were no windows, and the cells were all empty. The places where there had been the glass doors had been shattered, and a few shards of glass still clung to the sides here and there. Some had been crusted by dark substances, like dried blood as if something had simply forced its way through the glass, heedless of the fact that it was slashed and cut in the process. But it wasn't all the right color to be blood, not human red blood at least. The things that had been captive had escaped.

As she puzzled over how that could have happened, she heard footsteps in the hallway, and there was a man, dressed in camouflage like a soldier in an action movie. He was a tall black man, with a bald head and a worried expression. He just walked slowly down the hallway, as if he was inspecting it, and one hand clenched into a fist as he walked.

Tara grabbed at the mug, and swallowed cold coffee. She really needed to get better control over this. She'd been certain that she had it under control, that she wouldn't see unless she tried, and then she'd come here, to Sunnydale. It had been the farthest place from home that she'd been able to get a college acceptance letter from, and that had been almost all that she'd known. Far away and a smallish town, and off she'd gone. Maybe it was the Hellmouth? Or maybe she'd only thought that she'd had control, and it was just an illusion? Or maybe… It didn't matter. Scott and Jean were from a school for mutants, maybe they would be able to help her regain control.

She wondered how Mrs. Summers was doing with her date. Apparently, she hadn't really dated since they'd come to Sunnydale, and Buffy was worried. Or maybe Buffy was worried because Scott didn't like this Vic Creed person. She found herself wondering why that was.

Her mind did this little skipping thing, and she was seeing a flicker of images. Mrs. Summers, stepping out of her car at a little hotel, where a huge blond man opened the door. Mrs. Summers standing next to the same huge man at the art gallery, clearly on a different day. The blond man – Vic Creed? – clad all in roughly tanned leathers, throwing a short dark hared man that almost resembled a cranky Xander into a tree. The blond man again, standing next to a very old man, surrounded by police cars.

"Ohhh…. That's got to stop." Tara whispered, rubbing at her temples. Okay, had the old guy been Magneto? She seemed to remember Scott saying something about Vic Creed being Sabertooth, and working for Magneto, a very scary old man indeed. But who had the other man been? The one with dark hair? No, she was letting her thoughts wander now. That didn't matter now.

She wondered when Scott and Jean would get back, and then what they would do with the blond girl that they'd gone to rescue. Would this be a Scooby-conference at the Magic Box? Who was the man in camouflage, and why were there cells? Cells that had no windows, she realized. Why didn't they have windows? Could they be underground?

She wasn't really sure what sort of connection the rows of cells had for her, but she knew that they'd be coming up again. This was Sunnydale, and she was associating with the Slayer, if there were cells holding things, they would come up. Again and again, and probably connected with someone or a group of someones doing something horrible. She'd learned a lot about horrible things in Sunnydale.

Slowly, she picked up the phone and dialed the number for Mr. Giles. If there wasn't already a Scooby meeting in the planning, there would need to be one.

Scott leaned back in the car, trying to relax. Jean and the girl, Charlie, were in the front of the car, and Jean was driving them away from the coffee shop. They were chattering, talking about tings that didn't sound important to him. He let their words blur, and just tried to follow the feelings and reactions. Jean was trying to be soothing, and Charlie wanted to feel normal, like she wasn't being hunted.

Something would have to be done about her pursuers. People like that wouldn't stop because Charlie didn't want to play their games, and they wouldn't stop because she'd decided to go to a school. Actually, if the people after her learned of an entire school full of mutants… He shuddered, his mind painting vivid, crimson pictures of the school destroyed and the children dragged away for 'research' that would leave them either living weapons or dead from hours and hours of painful experimentation.

It was just as clear to him that Charlie should have a chance to not worry about those guys, even if only for a little bit. Maybe Jean could help her relax, to remember that she was till just a kid. Charlie couldn't be older than Buffy, for heaven's sake. They were both so young, and neither one of them was as care-free as girls that age should have the chance to be.

His stomach clenched as a dark thought occurred to him. Were the people chasing Charlie connected to the group that Buffy's boyfriend was involved with? They'd known about mutants as well as demons and vampires. The quiet one had mentioned rumors of previous projects involving mutants or demons, what sort of rumors were there? Did he mean the project that had given Logan those claws? Government controlled mutant spies? Something else, darker and uglier than either of those ideas?

Could they trust Buffy's boyfriend not to lead disaster right to them?

End 35.

Instead of returning home, Xander decided to swing by the Magic Box. Anya would probably be up and on her way there anyhow, talking about the many uses for some of the strange powders and her hopes of making money. Sometimes, he wondered if they could have a future together, if she'd let them, and sometimes, he just wondered about her. But the whole mess left him feeling unhappy, and not just because his boss was probably very, very dead. There was the obvious problem of what had caused the crime scene. But he also wanted to know why a jeep full of military guys had showed up there, and what they had to make the cops listen to them. It just didn't feel quite right to him.

He parked his car in the back, and walked up to the door marked 'Employees Only', and pushed it open. He could hear Giles, with the sort of quiet pauses that probably meant a phone conversation, and a definite lack of shouting that meant it was probably going okay.

Giles turned, glancing towards the door, relaxing slightly when he saw that it was just Xander, and Xander gave a small wave.

Moving to the back room that held the books of demons, he started to pull out the books that he could remember held descriptions of demons that tore their victims apart. He wasn't really sure that he wanted to know, or how far he'd be able to get without having actually seen the scene of the crime. Funny how calling it that made it almost easier, almost let you forget that someone had been torn apart.

"Xander, shouldn't you be at work?" Giles asked from the doorway. "What are you looking for in the Ketron's Compendium?"

"Second is directly related to the first, Giles." Xander muttered, flipping on past. Whatever had done it had been able to get into the garage without trashing the door or leaving some sort of gross slime trail, so he could eliminate some things right away. "No ice cream trucks shall go forth today, on account of the garage where our trucks sleep is now a crime scene. They didn't let us peek, but I think my boss is in pieces I there, and we're going to have to deal with whatever was responsible."

"Umm." Giles made one of those unhappy noises, and moved closer, returning one book to the shelves. "There probably won't be anything useful in this one, those demons requite a summoning, and the signs of that sort of ceremony are unmistakable and have been absent in Sunnydale."

"One less book then." Xander sighed. "I didn't see inside, but the cops looked pretty pale, so it had to have been messy."

"Was there anything that you can say about the scene?" Giles asked, adjusting his glasses.

"A jeep full of military types showed up pretty close after the cops, and they were going inside to take a look. That doesn't mix with normal police or military procedure, so something's not right there." Xander shook his head, and muttered, "None of which gets us any closer to knowing what did happen."

"How do you know that it isn't standard military procedure?" Giles asked, with an unexpected note of interest.

"Remember Halloween? The one that wasn't nearly as uninteresting as you promised it would be?" Xander replied, looking at Giles. "I got turned into a soldier, and I still have bits and pieces of his memories. I probably can't strip down an M16 as fast as Soldier-boy could, or automatically know the passwords and clearances for any given base, but I know when something's not the normal way, and the bits that are left are dead certain that's not normal. More like military-law in a combat zone than a normal base in a civilian area."

Giles nodded, and settled into the chair opposite Xander. "That is quite reasonable sounding. It's to be expected that there would be some remaining bits of memory, though my research suggests that it's most comparable to remembering a particularly vivid dream."

"So why do you still look a bit freaked?" Xander asked, having a prickling certainty that things were going to get worse.

"I'm sure that you recall Buffy mentioning that she had observed groups of men in camouflage during some of her patrols. They appeared to be hunting, and the odds that it is simply a longstanding game of paintball are… not worth betting." He shook his head, and made a sort of tskking noise. "Adding in the news of your near-uncle and his run in with similarly garbed individuals who made things most unwelcome…"

"How did you know about that?" Xander blurted. "I didn't tell you."

"You are, I assume, aware that your almost uncle called Joyce. Buffy learned of her mother's renewed plan to date, and was… mmm… concerned. Apparently, Buffy and her cousin Scott attempted to persuade Joyce not to go on her date this morning, and were rather unsuccessful. His temporary incarceration at the hands of these soldiers was brought up, and Buffy made extensive complaints to me after her patrol about the soldiers and their complications, including the fact that Riley Finn is one of their number." Giles glanced at the table, frowned, and continued. "Now you tell me that there were camouflaged individuals at the ice cream truck garage, and that such a presence is not standard military procedure, and I believe it adds up to the military has an interest in the demonic."

"That can't end well." Xander muttered.

"No, I don't believe it will." Giles agreed, and then added, "At Tara's suggestion, I've called for a Scooby meeting. Now, I'm going to get some more tea."

"Right." Xander nodded, his mind already spinning wildly. Why had Tara suggested the meeting? Buffy's near-boyfriend was one of the soldiers? What were they up to? And the whole idea of the government and demons… He kept thinking of the late Mayor Wilkins. "We're so screwed."

End 36.