Chapter 7: 'Strange Goo'

"Dawn!" Buffy hollered. Grabbing the axe out the weapons chest, she ran up stairs, taking the steps two at a time. "Dawn!" she hollered again – hoping her realization hadn't come to late.

Her sister appeared on the landing.

"What?" She asked.

Buffy grabbed her arm and pulled her behind her protectively.

"Demon!"

"What? Where?"

Buffy pointed into the bedroom, "Under your bed!" She whispered.

"No there isn't"

"There is!"

"No, Buffy – there isn't a…"

"Listen, I'm the Slayer and I'm telling you there's a demon under your bed!"

"You're also my paranoid older sister"

Buffy clenched her fists in frustration. "Listen to me. Now I want you to go downstairs, arm yourself with a stake – "

"Can't I have the axe?"

"No, you can't have the axe. You can have the nice, safe, non-house destroying stake from the chest instead"

"But Buf -"

"Dawn, this is serious! Then I want to ring Xander on his cell and get him to come straight over"

"He's gonna help you kill the demon? How come I don't get to help kill the demon?"

"Because you don't. And neither does he. He's gonna help me fix the table afterwards"

"Oh"

"Now go!"

Rolling her eyes, and muttering something about 'paranoia' and 'over-reaction', Dawn tramped downstairs. Buffy heard her cluttering around in the weapons chest, no doubt looking for a stake that closely resembled an axe. She'd be a long time looking.

Slipping into Slayer mode, Buffy crept cautiously towards Dawn's bedroom door. Upstairs, all was quiet, and it just made what she was doing more intense. Slaying. Hunting. Saving her sister from being eaten in the middle of the night.

Reaching the closed door, she gripped the handle, wishing she had x-ray vision, so she could actually see something…and then kicked the door open.

"Hey! That's my door you just broke!" Dawn hollered from downstairs. Buffy ignored her, and gripping the axe tightly, burst into the room, wielding the weapon high above her head.

At first she didn't see anything odd. Bed was made and neat. Window was open, but only an inch to let the breeze through, the curtain fluttering. The closet doors were shut and the space under the bed was…empty.

Buffy stood back up and frowned. She'd been so sure there had been a demon under the bed. Ok, so she'd only sensed it, but her slayer senses were finely tuned for such…things.

"Have you found it yet?" Dawn shouted up the stairs.

"No" Buffy admitted. "But it's here. It is, it's just - "

Buffy saw, for split-seconds, a dark shape descending from the ceiling above her head, the glint of sharp teeth, the thick fur of something that desperately needed 'Frizz-Ease'; and then a sharp pain in her head.

All went black.

*****     *******       *******          ******

"Hey, she's coming around"

"Buffy? Buffy, can you hear me?"

"I bet she's broken something. I bet her brain's all broken up"

"Anya, just  – no. Buffy, can you hear me?"

She felt like she'd just been crushed under a twenty-two and six ton anvil.

"Ow" she grimaced, opening her eyes slightly. The faces of her friends surrounded her, all giving her the worried hairy eyeball. It was an intense spectacle from her position on the floor and Buffy hastily shut her eyes again.

"No, Buffy, wake up"

"I told you she was broken. This demon, it broke her brain and now there's no one left to save the world. We're all screwed and it's all your fault"

"I didn't know there was a demon on the ceiling!" That was Dawn.

"Anya, guys: I'm not broken" Buffy sighed. "I'm ok. I'm fine" She opened her eyes again. "But can you just back off a little?"

Taking Xander's outstretched hand, the Slayer clambered to her feet. She was on the floor of the landing, facing the entrance to Dawn's bedroom. Buffy wondered if she got thrown out here, but her injuries didn't tell her that much. She had a cut above her eyebrow that stung like something stingy, and a bump on the back of her head. But she was still in working order.

"Fully functional, in fact" she commented proudly.

Giles, Anya, Xander and Dawn surveyed her critically.

"You ok Buffy?"

"Dawn, I'm fine. Really" she replied. "Stupid demon. I should've seen it coming" She massaged her shoulder. "What was it exactly?"

Giles took off his glasses and frowned. Buffy winced.

"Do we know what it was?"

"Well, we…we know that…"

"Giles doesn't know anything" Anya chimed in.

"Do you mind?" He responded, irritably. Anya rolled her eyes and turned to Buffy.

"What I mean is – you got clobbered and the demon skedaddled out of here on whatever it uses for legs before any of us could get a look at it"

"Oh" Buffy thought for a minute. "Well it was big. And hairy, if that helps"

"Oh sure, it narrows it down a lot. Big and hairy –no problem for us researchers" Xander said. He frowned as eyes turned on him "What? I was being sincere"

"And scarily optimistic. That's inappropriate" Anya replied.

"What? We have Buffy's description, Giles' brain, and the writing all over Dawn's room – what else do we need?"

Dawn groaned, Buffy's eyes widened, and Anya hit Xander on the arm.

"Tell me off for blabbermouthing" she muttered.

"Writing? What writing?" Buffy asked slowly.

"Just some words, Buffy, written on the walls. Quite intruiging actually…"

She didn't wait to hear the rest of Giles' sentence. Praying to something that it wasn't too bad, she ran into her sister's bedroom.

"Oh…crap" She whimpered.

The others followed her in.

"Well, you know I've been wanting to redecorate" Dawn offered.

The room was unrecognizable. The furniture was over thrown, the window broken – clothes from the closet strewn out over the floor. And there was a horrible smell resonating from the writing on the wall.

"You know, it doesn't look that bad…And I can fix the window" Xander offered.

Buffy ignored him, and stepped closer to the wall at the far end. Scrawled in a greeny, slimey, and definitely smelly kinda… slime were the words:

'My Cheese is green today…'

Buffy muttered them aloud. Beneath that hastily scrawled sentence, was another line, which Giles continued:

"Apocalypse is coming; thanks for the orb, signed MoW"

"Mow?" Xander asked. "As in 'Mr. Lorne. Mow – er"

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Xander, even my jokes aren't that bad"

"No, I, uh, I, I believe it's pronounced Maou"

"Oh, a Maou demon!" Anya exclaimed.

"You've heard of it?" Giles said.

"Yes, back in my demon days…"

The Scooby Gang waited for her to continue.

"Well?" Prompted Dawn "what's it like?"

"I said I'd 'heard of it'. I didn't say I knew what it looked like, nor what it's evil agenda was" She studied the wall some more. "Though this one apparently needs a new fridge"

"Thanks a bunch, Ahn" Xander commented. Anya glowered at him. He returned to the broken window, to which he felt strangely attached. Even if he ended up being a spare part later on, he knew that at least he could return to his window. And make jokes about it. At least he had that.

Giles went up to Buffy, who was still stood staring at the wall.

"You ok?"

"Look at this mess!" she turned to him. "I don't want mess. I want clean, unbreaky things. That don't cost money and don't need replacing"

"Least it wasn't designer wallpaper" Giles offered with a wry smile, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"That doesn't make it any better" Buffy prodded at the rapidly hardening slime. "And I don't think this stuff is gonna KleenEze off"

"Least now I can get my all goth bedroom, with black walls" Dawn said.

"No. You. Can. Not"

Dawn folded her arms. "Well I've gotta rebel sometime, aside from nearly getting run over, I'm not doing very well"

Buffy glowered.

"Ok, apart from the 'stealing for attention' thing, which was very lame…And bad" Dawn added quickly. "Very bad. I'm a bad bad girl and must be punished"

Even Xander stopped at that one.

"You nearly got run over?" Anya chirped "What was it like?"

Buffy took a deep breath. "Guys, as much as I love standing in another wrecked room, we have work to do. Research"

"Yes, Buffy's right" Giles put his glasses back on, and then promptly took them back off again. "We need to find out what this MoW demon wants, especially as it's threatening an apocalypse"

"Buffy, what's your orb like?" Xander asked, and then blushed, mortified. Buffy grinned at him, and raised an eyebrow. "What I mean is…" He stammered. "I mean – the orb orb. The orb-shaped…The one the graffiti-liking demon wrote about"

She smiled at him. "I know. And you have a point which I'll swiftly turn over to our watcher here. Giles?"

"Well, erm…It's difficult to say"

"I think I know which orb the MoW demon was talking about" Dawn intercepted. "It was one I found…well, was given. I kept it on my desk" She glanced at the piece of furniture that had decided it didn't like itself anymore and had broken itself into eight pieces "It was pretty – like glass with a little swirly purple thing in it"

"Cute" Buffy commented.

"Yeah. Well, sometimes, it changed colour. I was using it for a paperweight"

"You say it changed colour?" Giles strolled thoughtfully across the room, one arm of his glasses resting on his bottom lip.

"Yeah, from a purple swirly thing to a pink or blue swirly thing. Oh, and it got warm too" She added.

"Oh dear lord". The Ex-Librarian, ex shop-owner sighed deeply, and paused, staring at the far wall. Then he turned. "The Orb of Apoc"

"The Orb of Apoc" Xander echoed gravely. He paused. "What's that?"

"One of the most powerful and, and simply terrifying energy orbs ever created, by, by both man and monster. It works by drawing energy, emotion and raising taxes. This orb, if it's fallen into the wrong hands" He drew a sharp breath. "This could be catastrophic"

Buffy turned on Dawn. "You had this Orb all the time? It's the Orbiest Orb of them all, and you had it here, in this house. As a paperweight!"

"I didn't know!"

"Dawn, a paperweight!?"

Giles coughed. "Well, actually, it's an easy mistake to make"

Buffy looked at him, and sighed in resignation.

"So, what does this 'Orb to rule All Orbs' do exactly?" Xander asked. "Just so we can undo it. Before it happens."

"Disaster" Anya muttered, from where she was sat on Dawn's bed. "Pain. Loss…Death"

"Yippee" Xander replied "And already this feels so familiar"

"But how Giles?" Buffy said with concern. "How does it do this?" Giles bit his lip, and stared out the window.

"It creates an energy rift, using the sun and the hell dimensions" He said slowly. "Time breaks down, the, the users, they can stop time, undo it. The dead, the dead are reversed"

"Reversed?" Xander asked.

"Resurrected" Anya explained.

"Oh. Ew. Or perhaps yay"

Giles gave Xander a look and continued. "This orb, if used correctly, it, uh, it opens the hellmouth so wide, that the earth is swallowed whole, and all alive suffer in hell forever. If it gets into the wrong hands"

"Like demon hands"

"Thank you Anya, yes, demon hands" There was silence in the room, as all present digested this dramatic information.

"The hellmouth. Will open" Buffy commented. She looked at the others. "Anyone else getting a sense of déjà vu?"

One by one, they all nodded.

"Good. I thought it was just me"