"Buffy, you're not looking at this rationally. If Joey is alive, then why would the First try to convince Spike she was dead?"
"I don't know, Giles. But why else would it not kill her? I mean, what if it expected us to find out she was alive? Then she would be the perfect bait to lure us in there." Buffy said, looking up at the watcher pacing in front of her couch.
"Well, erm… I have reason to believe that perhaps, and I'm not saying I'm one-hundred percent correct on this one, but perhaps the First would, well, bleed her." He said, stopping his pacing and standing still. "Much like it did Spike…"
"But, that would mean…"
"More turok-ahns." He said. "According to Andrew, the seal can be used as many times as need be in order to resurrect the creatures, as long as a new person's blood is used each time.Using Joey… well, that would be a moral blow, but it wouldn't kill her."
"So how do you know that's what it's doing?"
"I don't, but if you had a choice between eyeless bringers and super vamps, which would you choose? Besides, according to Willow, there have been an unusually high number of disappearances around town recently." Giles sighed, watching as Buffy stared hatefully at the floor. "Buffy, are you sure you're going to be all right while we're gone?"
"It's only for three days." She muttered, looking back up at him. "I'll live."
Giles sighed once more, looking over his shoulder as Xander walked down the stairs, his arms full. "Is that the last of it?"
"Hope so." Xander replied. "At the rate we're going, we're going to have more bags than people."
"Is everyone outside?" Giles questioned, turning back to Anya, who had just walked back in the front door.
"Besides me, you, and Willow, yes." She replied.
"Coming." Willow called, bounding down the stairs. "Just had to finish packing a few things."
Giles rolled his eyes. "Be careful." He muttered to Buffy, walking out the door.
"You too!" Buffy called back, smirking a bit.
"Call if anything comes up, okay?" Willow said, smiling at her friend.
"I will, and same goes for you." Buffy replied, still seated on the couch.
-----
"What was that all about?" Spike questioned, looking up from the Slayer's bed as she walked into the room. He was sitting cross-legged in the center of it, Willow's computer open in front of him.
"Dawn's hogging the bathroom." Buffy said simply, handing him a coffee mug full of blood. "Willow let you borrow that?"
"Yeah." He answered, taking the mug gratefully from her. "Said it would do us more good if we actually used it then let it sit while she was gone."
Buffy nodded, taking a seat on the end of the bed. "You find anything?"
He snorted. "You kidding? I don't know what the bloody hell I'm doing with this thing."
Buffy smiled a bit. "Here, let me see."
He shrugged, sliding the computer from his lap and across the bed towards her. She slid back so that she was sitting sideways and he could still see the screen. "Look, the first thing you gotta do is open a search engine like Google, Dogpile, Mamma, or Yahoo…"
Spike quirked an eyebrow at her. "You're telling me they couldn't come up with better names?"
She just shook her head, then pointed at the screen. "See this little box? You just click it and type in whatever you're looking for."
"That how Willow got all that stuff 'bout Joey?"
"Probably." Buffy said, typing in the girl's full name. A list of sights came up, consisting mostly of old news articles. She clicked the first one, bringing up a different site than Willow had accessed. It held the same information, but came accompanied with different pictures.
"That the two of them?" Spike asked, leaning forward and looking over her shoulder.
"Yeah…" Buffy muttered, scrolling down. She clicked the picture and it brought up a number of others, all consisting of the two tiny twin girls. Some were just the two of them, but others contained their parents as well, holding them and grinning proudly.
"You really think they killed her?" Spike asked, looking at the pictures as they went by. "They seem so…"
"Happy." Buffy finished for him. She swallowed, then closed the window. "That's not going to do us much good…"
"Guess not…" Spike muttered in agreement.
"Maybe we should patrol tonight, see if we can find anything new around town. Haven't been able to do that properly with all the girls around." She said, closing the laptop.
Spike nodded. "Sounds good, but what about Dawn?"
"Andrew will be here with her. Worse comes to worse she can use him as a distraction while she gets away."
Spike chuckled a bit. "I thought you were supposed to be protecting the helpless, not throwing them to the baddies to save your hide."
Buffy smiled. "I gave him a weapon."
Spike raised his eyebrows in question.
"A cross…"
"Oh, well, that'll be the difference between life and death for the boy." The vampire said, smirking. "Very noble of you."
"I try." She said.
"So, what do we do 'til sunset?" He questioned.
"I don't know about you, but as soon as Dawn gets out of the bathroom I'm taking a long bath."
Spike laughed a bit. "Think I'll leave you to your own on that one." He said, standing. "You hungry?"
"No thanks." Buffy said, watching as he made his way towards the door.
"More for me and Dawn, then." He said.
"Wait. What are you making?"
He turned, smirking a bit at her. "Those chicken wings I hid in the back of the freezer. I figured if I made 'em when everyone was around I'd get like, two."
She smiled. "Probably."
"So you want some?"
"A couple."
He smiled, nodded, and walked back down the hall.
-----
"Dawn, if anything happens, call me. I have my phone and Spike has yours, just in case something happens and you can't get through to one of them, alright?"
"Buffy, it's not like I haven't stayed home while you've gone patrolling before." Dawn stated, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Yeah, and I'll be here to keep and eye on her." Andrew said, nodding.
Buffy and Spike stared at him for a moment. "And you have permission to tie him up if he gets too annoying." Buffy added.
"Check." Dawn said.
"Hey." Andrew whined.
"Be careful, Bit." Spike said, following Buffy out the door.
"I will." She said.
"Me too!" Andrew called. Dawn stared at him. "So, uhm, there's this Star Trek marathon on TV tonight so maybe we could…"
"I'm going to finish my homework." Dawn said, walking past him and upstairs.
"O-Okay then."
-----
"So, any special plans?"
"What?" Buffy questioned, giving Spike an odd look.
"Plans. Are we going anywhere specific or are we just doing your run-of-the-mill cemetery walkthrough?" Spike asked.
"Not really." Buffy mumbled, twirling a stake in her hands. "I mean, I can't think of any resident demons that I haven't pummeled for information yet. You?"
"My sources are dry." He said. "So, cemeteries then?"
"Looks like."
Spike sighed. "Away we go then."
Buffy nodded as they walked in the direction of the nearest cemetery. "I wonder how Giles and the others are holding up."
"Well, seeing as they're in the desert, I'm guessing they don't have to worry about listening to the girls fighting over the bathroom." He said matter-of-factly.
Buffy smirked.
-----
"What are you looking for?" Andrew asked, watching as Dawn continued to type fervently at Willow's laptop.
"Anything I can find on the First." She said simply.
"But I thought Willow already looked on there?"
"She did. But it's not like she could look at every page on the internet. She had to of missed something."
"Want me to help?"
She looked up over the top of the laptop. Andrew was sitting on the couch opposite her, twiddling his fingers. "Whatever."
"Cool." He said, a bit to excited at being allowed to actually do something. "So, like, what exactly are we looking for."
"Anything." She said, not looking at him. "Ways to kill it, what it is, where it came from… anything."
"You know, those public internet search browsers aren't really all that good. I know a way to compile search results so that all the URL's are displayed in this really cool…"
"What are you talking about?" Dawn asked incredulously.
"Uhm, can I see?" He asked, pointing at the laptop.
She sighed. "Guess you can't hurt it." She muttered, sliding over so he could get at it.
"Thanks." He said, taking over the keyboard. "You know, I offered to help a long time ago but no one really believes me when I say I wanna do something good." He said as his fingers typed furiously at the keys.
"Maybe it's because you killed your best friend." Dawn suggested.
Andrew swallowed. "It wasn't my fault, The First was brainwashing me…"
"Whatever." She grumbled, leaning back against the couch. "What are you doing, anyway?"
"Well, a lot of search engines only show you sites that get lots of hits, so I'm reconfiguring one to display everything it finds instead of just the more popular stuff. I can also set it to filter out anything that doesn't contain the words 'evil', 'mystic', and 'ancient'. That should narrow the search down a lot."
"You know, I didn't think it was possible, but I think you know more about computers than Willow." Dawn said, sitting up. "So you're like, reprogramming Yahoo?"
"Pretty much." He said. "I mean, It's slightly illegal and leads to the site being crashed for about two days, but it's not exactly evil, right?" He questioned, looking at her.
She smiled.
-----
"Down there. With the redhead. See 'im?"
Buffy looked down from the balcony to the far corner of the Bronze. She nodded. "Yeah, I'm on it."
"What some help?" He asked, watching as she made her way to the lower level of the club.
"If you're up for dusting one measly fledgling." She called over her shoulder, smirking. They had been all over town and hadn't come across a single vampire or demon. Buffy had suggested the Bronze as a last ditch effort to kill something, and it had been a good call. They had dusted three vamps in the alley behind the building and Spike had just pointed out another.
He leaned on the rail and watched as she made her way through the crowd, pulling a poolstick from some guy's hand as she walked past. He protested, but she continued to walk past until she reached her target. It was all over in a few seconds. She had pulled the girl the vampire had been flirting with away and ran the pool stick through his heart, turning him to dust. Walking back, she handed the poolstick back t it's owner and looked up at him. He went back down the stairs and met her at the door.
"Well, wasn't that a difficult night." She said sarcastically. "I don't know about you, but I was really in the mood to kill something."
"You dusted two vamps, luv." He pointed out.
"Something more challenging." She offered. "Besides, the one like, tripped and fell on a two by four when he tried to run, I don't think that counts as…" She stopped, her phone ringing loudly in her pocket. She pulled it out quickly. "Dawn? What's wrong?"
Spike watched, concern etched on his face as he watched her.
"Right. Yeah, we'll be there in a little bit. No, we're coming now. Bye." She hung it up, putting it back in her pocket.
"She alright?" Spike questioned.
"They found something." Buffy said, beginning to walk a bit faster than she had been before. "Her and Andrew were screwing around on the computer and they found some stuff on The First."
"New stuff?"
"That's what she said." Buffy told him.
-----
"Look at this." Dawn said, laying out the numerous papers her and Andrew had printed on the dining room table. There were numerous pictures accompanied by small articles, along with another small stack of papers containing information on The First. "Andrew hacked into Yahoo's main system and reprogrammed it to look for exactly what we were looking for."
Buffy turned to the blonde, raising an eyebrow at him. "What? It's not like I do it all the time." He lied.
"Anyway, we pulled up this information." She said, handing her sister the separate stack of papers. Spike leaned over her shoulder, reading the paragraph Dawn had pointed to.
"The First Evil has an equal counterpart…" Buffy read outloud. "So that's what, like a First Good?"
"Something like that." Dawn said. "Keep reading."
Buffy returned her eyes to the paper, her eyes scanning over the words. "The First's are reincarnated into every generation. Each bares the ability to destroy the other, but the First Evil is generally more powerful and extinguishes its counterpart long before it can pose a threat."
"So it kills the good one?" Spike questioned.
"No." Andrew said, taking the papers from Buffy and flipping through them. "Killing one would result in the death of the other. It's basically just hides the Good somewhere where it'll never be released."
"And you guys found all this in the three hours we were gone?" Buffy questioned. "Willow's been looking for weeks!"
"I told you I could help if you just gave me a chance." Andrew said stubbornly. "Anyways, we cross checked some things, and then these pairs of names started popping up."
"These." Dawn said, pointing to the pictures on the table. Buffy and Spike walked over, getting a better look.
"They're all a bunch of babies." Buffy pointed out.
Dawn nodded. "Yeah, but look." She lifted up one of the pictures, revealing the mutilated body of another child. "They're all twins, and one always dies. They all have the same birthday, and the younger of the two always dies a week after their first birthday." She handed her sister a list of names and dates. "And eventually, the second one goes missing."
Buffy's eyes fluttered over the list. There must have been hundreds of names compiled. She flipped back to the last page, and sure enough…
"Joey and Jordan." Buffy and Spike muttered in unison, reading the last names on the list.
TBC…
A/N: Ack. So I'm pretty sure you figured out where I'm going with this. But yet again, I really don't like how the chapter turned out. I tried to lighten it up a bit, but I think that just resulted in me killing the story a bit. Ack. Anyways, I suck at putting what I want to happen into words, but you get the idea. And no, I have no clue if it's possible to do whatever I had Andrew do with hacking into Yahoo, it was just stuck in there to make the story work. :P Let me know whatchu think.